Children with Special Educational Needs

Frequently asked questions

What arrangements are there for special educational needs in schools?

Schools are responsible for managing their own funding for special educational needs so they can make sure that arrangements are in place to meet a range of needs.

A contingency fund is held centrally and a panel of Head Teachers make decisions about requests from primary schools for short-term arrangements for children with exceptional needs.

Dowry funding is held centrally and the Special Educational Needs Panel considers requests from primary schools for short-term arrangements for children with exceptional behavioural needs.

Advice and training is available from other services, including the Education Inclusion Team, to help schools develop their provision for special educational needs.

Statutory assessment is for pupils with severe, significant, profound, complex and long-term special educational needs. This will apply to about 1% of pupils. These children will need specialist education settings, intervention and care.

The local authority settings include 1 special school and other resources in mainstream schools. These settings are called additionally resourced provisions. They are the local authority's resource but are managed by the mainstream school. Specialist individual programmes can also be provided in mainstream schools.