Inclusion survey concludes

Thank you to the 76 of you who took the time to fill in the survey around how well internal and external systems work when a child’s or young person’s behaviour is a cause for concern.  The sub-group is using the results to inform the work they carry out going forward.

All of those who responded believe that they have a moral duty to keep children and young people in their setting, and do their utmost to keep them supported in school.

Primary school respondents told us that systems work well in the main.  In school, most staff members know all of the children, relationships with families are strong and the support they put in place helps both children and their parents and carers.  They recognise that external services are of high quality but accessing them can sometimes be difficult and their biggest wishes would be to have more support for SEMH and earlier identification of any special or additional needs before the child arrives in school.

Secondary school respondents said that although internal systems, such as pastoral mechanisms which support students and consistent behaviour management across all staff, work well, there is more to do around making the curriculum appropriate for all students, identifying need earlier and training all staff in pastoral care.  They believe external services are good but disjointed, and schools would welcome a single point of access.  They also responded that they would like there to be more spaces in/options for specialist provision, particularly for high performing ASD students, and that more help was needed for the reintegration of excluded students into mainstream settings.