By Emma Overett, Assistant Headteacher and SENCo at St Thomas of Canterbury Catholic Primary School and SEND Executive Lead at St Francis of Assisi Catholic Academy Trust (SFACAT)
Just over a year into my role as SEND Executive Lead, I began with a fundamental question: how can we ensure every child with special educational needs receives consistent, high-quality support regardless of which school they attend within our trust?
What I discovered was revealing. It has driven the beginnings of a comprehensive transformation in how we approach SEND provision across our academy trust.
The challenge: a postcode lottery within our own trust
Through school visits, teacher consultations, parent questionnaires and data analysis, a picture emerged. We were effectively operating a postcode lottery of SEND policies and procedures within our own academy trust.
Variations in definitions across our schools meant children requiring support were identified differently. This resulted in some schools potentially under-identifying students for their SEND register, while others may have been over-identifying, making accurate data analysis nearly impossible.
Teachers across our trust voiced a deeper concern: their initial training had not adequately prepared them for the complexity and diversity of needs they now encounter daily. The profession has intensified dramatically.
Teachers are no longer simply required to manage pupils' increased diagnosed and undiagnosed needs – we must strive to create highly adapted curriculums and environments where children flourish. Yet many felt they lacked the tools and understanding to move beyond heavy reliance on SENCo support.
Perhaps most frustrating for SENCos was how we measured progress. Teachers, support staff and SENCos consistently reported that children in our schools were making meaningful and developmentally appropriate progress as a result of the support and provision in place – but whole school data captured only that these pupils were working below age-related expectations. The small but very significant milestones our most vulnerable pupils achieved were rendered invisible in conventional reporting systems.
Implementing solutions: standardisation, training and adaptive teaching
Addressing these concerns required systematic intervention across three critical areas:
- Achieving consistency through collaboration - working in partnership with Hertfordshire County Council, we developed academy trust-wide guidance that created clear, concise understanding of SEND identification and processes. This collaboration was essential to achieving genuine standardisation. We clarified responsibilities for parents, teachers, support staff and SENCos, ensuring early identification followed consistent criteria across all schools. The result: we now have equitable, evidence-based identification practices that families and staff can trust.
- Building teacher capacity for adaptive teaching - rather than diluting the curriculum to meet pupils' needs, our schools are working to develop truly adaptive teaching – progressive, personalised curricula focused on each child's next step of learning. This is demanding work. In one of our schools with mixed-age classrooms, teachers may simultaneously plan entirely adapted curricula for children working at Reception and Year 1 level alongside those within an already mixed Year 3 and 4 classroom. To support this intensive workload, we are committed to establishing a comprehensive continuing professional development (CPD) programme. A teacher from a local specialist school has delivered targeted training, supporting both new teachers and experienced practitioners who have witnessed the significant diversification of needs over their careers. Our aim is to build capacity for meeting SEND need through developing teachers who don't just manage SEND pupils, but who enable them to flourish.
- Capturing progress through better data - our SENCos are adapting and trialing an assessment framework specifically designed to measure the small but significant milestones our most vulnerable SEND pupils achieve. This framework ensures we look beyond whole school attainment to capture individual progress data. For pupils awaiting specialist provision – often a multi-year wait – this monitoring is particularly crucial, demonstrating the impact of mainstream education during this extended transition period.
The impact: opportunities emerging from systematic change
These solutions are already generating tangible results and revealing further opportunities. One teacher who initially found adaptive teaching challenging, now shares: “Adapting every lesson to suit different learning profiles has allowed every child to participate meaningfully and achieve success in their own way. My belief in strong universal provision has strengthened, as I’ve seen how inclusive teaching benefits all learners, not just those with identified needs.”
Parents have reported the difference. One shared that our approach has transformed not only their daughter's education and emotional wellbeing but family life itself resulting from the teachers ‘dedication’ and ‘commitment to learning new strategies and skills’. These are the outcomes that validate our continued approach.
Leveraging partnership opportunities
The local authority area manager and specialist outreach teams have welcomed our academy trust's vision for SEND, pooling their resources to support a wider audience of our teachers and support staff.
We're accessing free training in sensory processing, speech and language programmes, Specific Learning Difficulties and specialist interventions that would be difficult for individual schools to secure alone.
Given the multi-year wait for specialist school places, we are actively considering what enhanced provision we might offer during this period, potentially including internal resource provision in some of our schools. This would represent a significant opportunity to better support our most vulnerable pupils while they await specialist placement.
Building professional communities
A SENCo role can be isolating. We've established a cluster for joint working, enabling SENCos to share expertise, resources and support. We're fortunate to have highly experienced SENCos including one completing her Masters, and this collaborative model transforms individual expertise into collective capacity.
Looking forward: data-informed, teacher-led impact
The role of an academy trust SEND Executive Lead is ultimately to put the right support in place for SENCos to impact teachers – who then impact children. By addressing potential inconsistencies, inadequate training for teachers, invisible progress, we are on a journey of creating solutions centred on standardisation, adaptive teaching and meaningful data.
The opportunities this generates extend far beyond improved statistics: we're building a system where we hope every child with SEND can flourish, every teacher feels equipped and empowered, and every family experiences consistent, high-quality provision.
Through systematic use of data to identify needs and drive improvement, combined with investment in adaptive teaching capacity, we are not just making a difference – we are fundamentally transforming what SEND provision means within our academy trust for the future.
Find out more about St Francis of Assisi Catholic Academy Trust and Catholic education in the Archdiocese of Westminster
