PROFESIONAL DE ENFERMERIA DIMENSIONES

The Harbour School is a community special school in Portsmouth which opened in 2007 as a result of the amalgamation of a BESD school, three pupil referral units and multi-agency behaviour support services under a single management and governance structure. A Power to Innovate Order was granted to relax the requirement to admit only children with statements of SEN. The school works with outside agencies and mainstream schools. It provides a flexible service and supportive short-term programmes to improve behaviour and address the underlying learning needs of targeted children, regardless of whether they have a statement. The school works with

mainstream secondary schools to increase their capacity to address BESD issues, share good practice, and agree the placement of Hard to Place pupils and pupils returning from The Harbour School.

This approach has led to extremely low levels of permanent exclusion in Portsmouth (eight since September 2007) and a significant reduction in fixed- term exclusions. 21 children with BESD statements have been re-integrated back into mainstream schools compared with zero in the preceding three years. Attendance has increased within the school. The school uses social and emotional development approaches to support students to make good

progress and there is a strong emphasis on achieving accredited qualifications. Question 30: What might the impact be of opening up the system to provide places for non-statemented children with SEN in special Free Schools?

3.69 We know that the quality and availability of SEN provision varies across the

country and we want to ensure that there are more equitable opportunities to access high quality provision, regardless of need or location. We will, therefore, over time, encourage proposers of Free Schools to come forward in particular areas of the country to provide education for particular SEN or disabilities, encouraging a greater diversity of provision while driving up quality.

Stronger school accountability

3.70 Public services are more likely to improve when autonomy is coupled with

accountability for outcomes.105 _{In The Importance of Teaching we described how}

we will dismantle the apparatus of central control and in its place make schools more directly accountable to parents, governors and the local community for the ways in which they help every child to progress and achieve. Here we set out our approach to delivering stronger accountability to parents, local communities and inspectors through clear information for parents and governors on school

performance in the performance tables and in Ofsted inspections, and through ensuring that governing bodies are confident to support and challenge the school to improve.

3.71 Many children with SEN are among the lowest attaining and, too often, do not

make the expected levels of progress, thereby perpetuating low attainment from key stage to key stage. We also know that post-16 young people with SEN are more than twice as likely to be not in education, employment or training (NEET) as those without.

3.72 To address this we will put in place Key Stage 4 and Key Stage 5 Destination

Measures to ensure that schools and colleges are accountable for helping all their pupils prepare for success post-16 and post-18 by showing young people and parents how many of schools’ and colleges’ former pupils progress into further education, employment or training.

3.73 We have also set out how we will improve the school system so that schools and

teachers can focus on helping children to fulfil their potential. We also need to make sure there is accountability for this improvement and that parents have clear information about their child’s attainment and progress that is meaningful at school level.

3.74 We propose to introduce new indicators into the performance tables relating

to the progress of the lowest attaining 20 per cent of pupils. This would focus on those pupils entering a key stage who have not reached the expected national curriculum level. The progress indicator would help show parents and the public how well schools do in supporting those pupils who start with low attainment to progress, by showing the proportion of pupils who started in the key stage from behind the nationally expected level and who have gone on to make expected levels of progress between national assessments, or even better. That is, it would show the proportions achieving at least two levels of progress from Key Stage 1 to Key Stage 2, and three or more levels of progress or the equivalent between Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 4.

Question 31: Do you agree with our proposed approach for demonstrating the progress of low attaining pupils in performance tables?

3.75 We now have in place the statutory collection of ‘P Scale’ assessment data which breaks pupils’ progress down into smaller steps, and helps teachers to track the progress of those pupils with SEN who are working below level 1 of the National Curriculum. In order to help schools work together to improve their use of ‘P Scale’ assessments, teachers will have clear information that they can use to help them track pupils’ progress, identify strengths and areas for development, and improve teaching and learning.

3.76 In addition, to help special schools track the performance of those pupils

operating below the level of Key Stage 2 assessments (and put in place the right support), we have trialled school-level reports in the RAISEonline school and pupil tracking programme. Two reports are now available on RAISEonline for all special schools that have Key Stage 2 pupils.