Ofsted as a SENCO: Part 1 – preparation

Penny Whelan explains what preparing for an Ofsted inspection was like in her role as a SENCO in the first of this two-part series

Before the call

In reality, you need to be ready before you even get the call. Not that we should need to be “ready for Ofsted.” The focus should always be on doing our very best for the children, not jumping through hoops, but unfortunately, for now at least, it is the reality.

Not much can be achieved in the one afternoon/evening you have before they arrive. You really need that time to build your confidence and take time to relax and keep yourself and other staff calm. But, there are some things you can have prepared before the visit that can help, meaning you have your key information in one place and easy to lay your hands on.

What to have ready

There are lots of other things you could prepare, but these are the essentials that I found to be really useful on the day:

• Special Educational Needs and Disabilities register – You’ll need to be able to talk through how you organise this and how the process works in your school for identifying SEND pupils and supporting them. You could create a specific document that shows your school’s process for identifying, supporting and referring pupils.
• Interventions – You might want to have a list of interventions that you run, why they are important and the impact they have. This could be a printed list or you might have an online system where you can run a report to show what you are doing to support pupils who need additional provision outside of the classroom.
• Individual Education Plans/Individual Learning Plans (IEPs/ILPs or similar) – You don’t need to have all of these ready, but the inspector will want to look in more detail at a few specific children; looking at the children’s IEPs and reviews may be part of the process.
• SEND policy and information report – Ensure these are up to date and also shared on your website so they can be easily accessed by parents/visitors.
• Website – This needs to be up to date, easy to navigate, and contain key information about the school. Show your ‘best bits’ and celebrate them on the website and social media. Ofsted will look at these before you ever get ‘The Call’ and you won’t even know it!
• Provision maps – These show how you support the pupils in your school in terms of intervention groups, additional access arrangements, small group support in class, etc. All schools organise these in different ways.

I also use a fantastic web-based resource called Provision Map (link in resources section) which is well worth a look if you don’t have it. All of our IEPs, interventions, reviews and documents are stored here. It’s easy for all staff to see things and navigate, and parents can also look at documents and share their views.

Preparing staff

Preparing yourself is one thing, but it’s important to prepare your staff too – long before you ever get ‘The Call’. Prepare them to be confident in what they are doing and how to explain it, and to remain calm enough to be able to do the amazing job they do every day while there are visitors around who are going to ask them questions about it.

• Make sure your staff really understand what your school’s key messages are around supporting children with SEND.
• Ensure your teachers know who the children are in their class with additional needs and how to support them.
• Make sure you provide appropriate training for all staff at regular intervals to help them learn more about SEND and how they can do the very best for the children in their care.
• Your teachers need to be fully aware of the fact that ‘all teachers are teachers of SEND’ and they need to know that the children are their responsibility. They need to be able to confidently talk about needs, progress and support – explaining how work is scaffolded or adapted for individuals, and the impact of this.
• Your teaching assistants/learning support assistants need to know who the children in the class are that need support, who exactly they will be working with and why, and be able to explain confidently what they are doing and how they can move the learning forward. It’s a good idea to prepare some mock questions for them so they have an idea of what they might be asked. This really helps people to feel more confident about explaining what they do.
• Make sure you have spoken to staff about what your expectations are around SEND support and ensure it is happening, e.g. if you expect certain things to be in books, make sure they are there and give staff time to do what you have asked.

It’s important to make sure you are doing the best for your SEND students and everyone understands what this looks like and how to do it. This isn’t for Ofsted! Of course it isn’t.

But, if everyone is confident and able to talk about the amazing job they do, they will be so much more at ease during an inspection.

Recommended resources

The Key – SEND learning walk proforma and resources to support SENCOs as well as other staff supporting SEND children.

Twinkl  – SENCO file documents, observation checklists and parent support documents on special needs.

Provision Map  (part of ‘TES’) – A really valuable online platform where you can create learning plans and share them with parents. Invite parental engagement, monitor and review interventions, and store documents securely so that staff can access and easily identify and locate pupil information across the school. I highly recommend it!