Councils must identify children in their schools who have educational needs. They must then assess their needs and decide what support the children need.
Mainstream schools are able to meet the majority of special educational needs. This is through Early Years Action and Early Years Action Plus. Or alternatively School Action and School Action Plus.
The council will need to make an assessment in a small number of cases.
This will involve the council, parents, the school and other agencies deciding whether an assessment is necessary. If so, the council will work closely with the parents and school to carry out the assessment.
The council will then decide whether to issue a statement of special educational needs. A statement will describe all the child’s special educational needs and what help they should receive.
If the school’s resources cannot meet the child’s needs then the council will make a statement. These resources could include money, staff time and special equipment.
Routes for Referral
The child’s school, parents or another agency can request an assessment by the council.
The school must complete a form for an assessment to take place. The school must return this to the council.
A copy of the form to be completed by the school is available below together with an accompanying booklet for information.
SENSAR form
Statutory Assessment of SEN booklet
Note: The above documents are in Portable Document Format (PDF) and therefore require a suitable reader to view them. A reader can be down loaded from the Adobe website (full instructions for downloading the reader are provided on the site).
Click: Special Educational Needs Section for contact details and for a further discussion on the statutory assessment process.
