Tools for Schools
How to encourage school leaders to develop whole school ownership of inclusion…especially when you are not part of the senior leadership team.
Things to consider:
- Request a regular slot on the agenda to update the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) on specific items. If this is turned down provide a solution-based paper to highlight the impact of not attending and include specific examples.
- Provide SLT with the information you would like to discuss along with proposal options ahead of the meeting to make the best use of the time you have.
- Develop a fortnightly panel where pastoral lead / SENCO / behaviour leads meet to discuss children who are causing concern. This allows a holistic view of the child to be considered and joint actions agreed. These can be recorded on an Assess, Plan, Do, Review cycle template.
- Use Governors to encourage SLT conversations.
- Seek a ‘mentor’ approach with key SLT member.
- Encourage discussion through the introduction of ‘How do we know?’ question frames. Evidence can be sought once discussions begin. E.g.
- Class teachers: How do we know that the child is engaging in their learning?
- SLT: How do we know that we are being inclusive for children and young people with English as an additional language?
- Provide opportunities to capture the pupils’ view on what’s working well, even better if. There are some useful child centred tools on the Tools for Schools website.
- Partner up class teachers to develop a ‘co-adventurers’ approach to introduce classroom approaches. For example, providing pupils with greater ownership of resources such as making sensory tools available for anyone to use. The ‘co-adventurers’ could share what works well with staff during staff meetings as part of the CPD programme.
- SENCO to spend time in classes with EHCP pupils (book reviews and observations) to provide teaching staff with helpful suggestions for next steps. Could include whole class adaptations such as visual timetables.
- Care is needed to manage change for staff as this can create stress. Book recommendation: ‘Switch: How to change things when change is hard Paperback’ by Dan Heath.
- Consider ‘How will you know that the tide is starting to change?’ Ask staff to contribute their ideas on what they would expect to see as part of this discussion.
- Use pupil voice to influence the change. Pupils to use cameras to capture what best helps them to learn.
Last updated 3 March 2022