The ‘graduated response’ sets out alternative approaches to learning over a period of time to help to your child’s special educational needs.
A step-by-step (or graduated) approach to teaching
If your child has special educational needs (SEN), your child’s early education provider, for example, day nursery, should take account of the guidance in the Special educational needs - Code of Practice.
Part of the Code describes how a step-by-step approach should be adopted to providing help for children with SEN in pre-schools (and school).
This approach recognises that your child may learn in a different way to another child and takes into account the level of their special educational need. The extra or different help could be:
- a different way of teaching certain things
- some help from an extra adult
For pre-school this help is called Early Years Action.
Your child’s early education provider will identify a member who will act as a SEN coordinator (SENCO). They may decide to put in place an Individual Education Plan (IEP) or, instead, simply record how they are meeting your child’s needs in a different way. The IEP should include:
- what special help is being given
- who will provide the help and how often
- what help you can give your child at home
If your child does not make enough progress, the teacher or SEN co-ordinator should talk to you about getting help from, for example, a specialist teacher or a speech and language therapist. This kind of help is called Early Years Action Plus.
The processes above may not meet the needs of your child so you or the professional who has been involved with your child, can request a ‘statutory assessment’.
Whereas a child’s Individual Education Plan is used as an informal planning and review ‘tool’ for teachers, a statutory assessment is a formal process with several groups of people being involved.