SEND Information Report 2025-26: Low Hall's part in the Local Offer

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1. The name and contact details of the SEND co-ordinator
2. What kinds of special educational needs does the school make provision for?
3. The school admissions process for children with SEND
4. Identifying children with SEND
5. The support, curriculum, and learning environment for all children
6. The support, curriculum, and learning environment for children with SEND
7. Staff training
8. Help from outside experts
9. Making our equipment and facilities suitable for children with SEND
10. Assessment and reviewing progress
11. Support for improving the emotional, mental, and social development of children with SEND
12. Working with the parents of children with SEND
13. Tell us when you think something we’ve done isn’t right
14. Sources of support for families
15. Leaving us and going to primary school
16. Self-evaluation of the school’s effectiveness in educating children with SEND

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1. The name and contact details of the SEND co-ordinator

Low Hall’s Special Educational Needs and Disabilities co-ordinator (SENDco) is Nalinee Sabaroche. Find her contact details on our website ‘contact us’ page.

2. What kinds of special educational needs does the school make provision for?

At Low Hall, we welcome every child. We support children with all kinds of learning, language, and physical needs. We give each child the help they need. We meet children where they are.

If your child has a condition that’s new to us, we ask experts how best to support them (see ‘How do you get help from experts? below)

 3. The school admissions process for children with SEND

On the application form, we ask if your child is growing and learning as you expected. We invite you to a Stay and Play session. You can meet Nalinee, our SENDco. You can talk to her about your child in a relaxed way. We all get to know each other.

If you know your child needs a specific kind of help, please tell us. We will give them that support if we can.

We offer places first to children who need them for “Medical or social reasons”. Before we can offer a place, families must meet with Nalinee.

When a child needs a lot of support, we may offer them a place for 15 hours a week. This is so we can give them the high-quality support they need. It's also less tiring for them. Nalinee decides how many hours we can offer.

We work with our families who need more than 15 hours. We offer more hours if the child is happy, and we have the staff, and we have a place.

4. Identifying children with SEND

When a family or one of our experienced staff see signs that a child might have complex, long-term educational needs, Nalinee will talk to you about it. Signs include:

• They don’t walk and/or communicate like other children the same age.
• How they were learning to move and communicate has slowed down.

Possible next steps:

• If you agree, Nalinee makes a referral to the Speech and Language Clinic.
• Or you visit a Speech and Language drop-in session. You say Nalinee can talk to them, so everyone shares the same information.
  The Speech and Language Therapist (SLT) holds drop-in sessions at the Leyton hub of the Children and Family Centre at Queens Road. 
• If you agree, Nalinee asks the Educational Psychologist to visit the school and watch your child play.
• Or you visit an Educational Psychologist drop-in session. You say Nalinee can talk to them, so everyone shares the same information.
  Book a free 30-minute session: email educationalpsychologyservice@walthamforest.gov.uk or call/text 07776 589597.

Sometimes, everyone agrees that a child needs more time to settle in.

Sometimes, everyone agrees that a child has complex, long-term educational needs. If so, Nalinee applies for SENIF funding.

When a child gets a diagnosis of complex, long-term educational needs, we support you to apply for an Education, Health, and Care Plan (EHCP). This work is a partnership between you, the school, and the Local Authority. We bring in all the relevant agencies, e.g. the Health Visitor, Speech Therapist, and Educational Psychologist. The EHCP sets out:

• the support your child needs
• how the school and other agencies will give it.

5. The support, curriculum, and learning environment for all children

Our Ordinarily Available Provision (OAP) is a calm and kind place for children to learn and play.

We believe every child is special and has their own way of learning and growing. We plan for each unique child. We change what we do so it meets their needs.

This means children with SEND follow the same curriculum as all the other children. The difference is the support we give them. All children engage in all school activities. Some get more support to do that.

Our outdoor area is excellent. It includes a Forest School area. These spaces offer many ways for children to be active and explore nature. Children fall. We help them to get up. They learn to get up by themselves. They build resilience.

6. The support, curriculum, and learning environment for children with SEND

You meet with your child’s Key Person and Nalinee. Everyone shares what they know about your child. Together, you create a My Early Years Support Plan. This has:

• the things you want the school to work on
• suggestions from us that you approve
• the strategies we are going to work on
• the interventions we are going to use.

Children with SEND work with a Special Educational Needs Assistant to reach the goals in their My Early Years Support Plan. Sometimes they work one to one, sometimes in small groups. The assistants get help and advice from Nalinee, as well as from other experts like the Educational Psychologist and the Speech and Language Therapist. Sometimes they spend time in our Sensory Room. This room has specialist visually- and other sensory-stimulating resources.

Here are some of the ways we help children:

• Bucket, Colourful Semantics, and turn-taking games. These help with social skills and language development. Read about Colourful Semantics on the NHS website.
• Speech and language programs. These are made by a Speech and Language Therapist just for your child.
• Intensive Interaction. This helps children learn to communicate.
• PECS ‘now and next’ boards. These show children what will happen next.
• Makaton. This uses signs and symbols to help children communicate.
• Tales Toolkit. This helps children learn to solve problems. It is a research-based storytelling intervention.

7. Staff training

All of our staff are trained to help children with SEND. Our Special Educational Needs Assistants have had even more training.

We train all our team throughout the year and at our 5 annual INSET days:

• to help them spot children's developmental delays and difficulties
• to improve their skills in supporting those children.

In the last few years, all staff have been trained on:

• ShREC: Shared Attention, Respond, Expand Conversation
• Sensory abilities and how they shape behavior
• PECS
• Tales Toolkit
• Colourful Semantics
• Autism and communication boards
• ADHD in girls and women
• Neurodiverse conditions via the FANS Learning Library

When a child joins us with needs we don’t know much about, we get specific staff training.

8. Help from outside experts

The SENDco works closely with our local NHS Speech and Language Therapists and Educational Psychologists. When children need us to, we work with our local NHS Occupational Therapists and Physiotherapists.

We often work with specialist teachers from:

• Whitefield School (autism, global delay)
• Brookfield House School (physical disability, hearing impairment)
• Joseph Clark School (for visual impairment)
• Hawkswood School (for nature and SEMH provision support)
• WF Hearing Impairment Team (teachers of the deaf)
• School Nursing team (inc. epilepsy, global conditions, food and nutrition support, asthma)
• The Virtual School (teacher for Looked After Children)

When we work with outside agencies, the SENDco usually acts as the lead professional.

9. Making our equipment and facilities suitable for children with SEND

Our OAP includes a lot of specialist equipment. Examples are visually- and sensory-stimulating resources, PECS, and other communication systems. When a child with particular needs joins us, we seek funding to buy the equipment they need.

Our Accessibility Plan sets out the work we continue to do to improve our accessibility. You can read it on the Policies page of our school website. It is based on our full Access Audit.

10. Assessment and reviewing progress

We use targets that are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) to assess children with SEND. We create these targets to fit their individual learning and development needs. We write them in your child’s My Early Years Support Plan. We have regular meetings with you to talk about their progress.

11. Support for improving the emotional, mental, and social development of children with SEND

We help children build confidence, become more independent, and develop a "can-do" attitude to learning. We teach all of them to see themselves as successful learners. We also provide them with the tools they need to understand and manage their own behaviour. An example is Tales Toolkit: children learn to look for solutions when they find they have a problem.

12. Working with the parents of children with SEND

We work closely with parents to make each child’s first experience of school fun and nurturing.

Parents have a wealth of knowledge and insight about their young children. We value what you tell us about your child’s interests, habits and daily routines. We need to hear your ideas about how we can help your child. This way we can give your child the best support possible.

We want your child to get the best out of time at school when you are not around. We also want you to know what your child is learning, who they are playing with, and how they are progressing. We arrange times for you to talk to the staff about your child’s learning and their My Early Year Support Plan.

We also help parents of children with SEND to find and support each other. The SENDco organises a coffee morning each term for these families. She also puts families whose children have a similar condition in touch with one another. This builds community support.

13. Tell us when you think something we’ve done isn’t right

Please talk to your child’s Key Person the minute you think something isn’t right.

Or you can talk to Nalinee.

Or you can talk to the Assistant Headteacher, Lindsay.

Or you can follow the Complaints Procedure on our website.

We need to hear!

14. Sources of support for families

The Waltham Forest Local Offer points to council and other sources of support.

The 'Get-help' page of this website links to support for all families.

15. Leaving us and going to primary school

Smooth transition to Primary School is very important to us.

We support and give advice to parents to apply to primary school.  When your child has complex learning and development needs, we arrange for you to visit schools which have specialist provision.

When we know where your child is going, we contact the school. We talk to them about your child’s needs. We tell them the strategies that have worked for your child at Nursery School.

We arrange for your child to do extra visits to their new school. This helps them to settle in. When your child is going to a school with specialist provision. their Key Person goes with them to the first transition meeting. This helps make the transition as smooth as possible.

16. Self-evaluation of the school’s effectiveness in educating children with SEND

These are the ways we get feedback to help us learn and improve what we do:

• Our governor who is responsible for SEND does a learning walk once a year. They meet with the SENDco at a different point of the year. Governors talk about what this Governor has found at Children’s Learning and Development Committee Meetings. You can read the minutes of these meetings on our website.
• We use the Early childhood environment rating (ECERS). This helps us to think about the quality of our learning environment. It also helps us to pinpoint opportunities for growth and improvement.
• We use the Shared sustained thinking and emotional wellbeing (SSTEW scale) to look at our educational practice.
• Ofsted says our educational provision is Outstanding.
• Our school has the Inclusion Quality Mark and is an IQM Centre of Excellence (one of only 240 schools in the country).

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