Legal
The framework for the committee's policy for SEN is provided by the UN convention on the Rights of the Child, The Children Act, The Education Act 1996, the 1993 Code of Practice and key 1994 regulations and circulars on the organisation of special educational provision.
Scope of the Policy
This policy is about all children and young people experiencing SEN in the 0 - 19 age range.
Under national legislation, a child or young person has special educational needs if she/he has a learning difficulty which calls for special educational provision to be made for him/her. Learning difficulty is defined in terms of children "who have a significantly greater difficulty in learning than the majority of their children of their age, and/or have disabilities which either prevent or hinder them from making effective use of educational facilities of a kind generally provided in schools in their LA area for children of their age, or who are under the age of five years and are, or would be if special educational provision were not made for them, be likely when over that age to fall within the terms above."
Exceptionally able or gifted children are excluded from this definition, as are children for whom English is a second language. The Education Committee recognises that these children have their own needs, however, which are addressed separately.
We define learning difficulties as constraints or barriers which prevent access to the curriculum. These may arise from factors within the child. Equally they can arise from factors within the learning environment. Removing those barriers - whether they are the classroom approach to learning, the physical nature of the learning environment, or the stressed nature of a young person's life in and out of school - is the purpose of special educational provision.