Our SEND Provision

Alexandra is proud to offer a wholly inclusive education to pupils with a wide range of special educational needs and disabilities. All our staff and pupils are inspired to support a positive approach to diversity and to accept and celebrate difference, with a vision of promoting equality and opportunity for all, and respect of others. 

SEN Support

Our school has a strong principle of early identification and intervention for pupils who need extra help. This is put in place if a child is not meeting targets, even if a special educational need has not yet been fully identified for that child. This extra support will more often than not enable the pupil to catch up.  Examples of our extra support services are specific intervention groups, focusing on an area of need, which work with small groups of children inside or outside the classroom. The school works closely with Occupational, Speech and Language and Physiotherapist teams, who are in our school on a regular basis and help to provide specialist therapy packages.

Enhanced Special Teaching Arrangement (ESTA)

Under the Local Offer, Alexandra School has a more formal SEN provision known as the Enhanced Specialist Teaching Arrangement (ESTA). This provision supports the integration of an additional 2 pupils per year group (with 3 assessment places in nursery) who have moderate and/or complex learning needs and is available to children with or without physical disabilities. Our ESTA programme is administered by our in-house ESTA Manager who works with our SENCO to help to deliver this provision. 

Each child in the ESTA has an EHCP that details their education and health and care requirements and agreed support packages. The arrangement comprises of a large group of 1:1 learning support assistants who work with class teachers and the Community Child Services Occupational Therapy, Physiotherapy and Speech and Language teams to understand and support their child’s needs, enabling such pupils to be fully included in our school and integrated into our classrooms to learn alongside their peers. 

Our ESTA programme is currently supporting children with Down Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, Global Developmental Delay, Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, hearing and vision impairments and various other conditions.