Early Assessment
At Dene Academy, we believe that education should be accessible for all, and we are committed to ensuring that students with SEND achieve their full potential.
We have experience of supporting children and young people with a wide range of needs.
Our Current cohort have a range of needs:
| Year Group | Communication & Interaction (inc. ASC) | Cognition & Learning | Sensory & Physical | Social, Emotional & Mental Health | E & K overall |
| Y7 | 7 (2) | 10 (3) | 2 (1) | 10 | (6) 29 |
| Y8 | 12 (4) | 15 (1) | 1 | 13 (2) | (7) 41 |
| Y9 | 9 (1) | 7 | 0 | 13 (3) | (4) 29 |
| Y10 | 27 (13) | 8 (3) | 1 (1) | 6 | (17) 42 |
| Y11 | 16 (2) | 9 (1) | 1 | 13 (1) | (4) 39 |
| Overall | 71 (22) | 49 (8) | 5 (2) | 55 (6) | (38) 180 |
*Brackets show the number of EHCPs.
| EHCPs | C&I (Inc. ASC) | C&L | PD | SEMH | Total (E) |
| All Year | 22 | 8 | 2 | 6 | 38 |
Student information updated September 2026
Cognition and Learning
This includes children with Specific Learning Difficulties, Moderate Learning Difficulties, Severe Learning Difficulties and Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties.
Communication and Interaction
This area of need includes children with Autism, and those with Speech, Language and Communication Needs.
Social, Emotional and Mental Health
This includes any students who have an emotional, social or mental health need that is impacting on their ability to learn, this may include ADHD.
Sensory and/or Physical needs
This area includes children with hearing impairment, visual impairment, multi-sensory impairment and physical difficulties.
Identifying and Assessing Students with SEND
At Dene, we adopt a graduated response to meeting the needs of our students with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities. We assess using a graduated approach, which has four stages: assess, plan, do, review.
This means we will:
Assess a child’s special educational needs.
● Plan the provision to meet your child’s aspirations and agreed
outcomes.
● Do put the provision in place to meet those outcomes.
● Review the support and progress.
Students with special educational needs are identified in a number of ways at
our school including:
● Transition information from primary school.
● Information from classroom teachers or school pastoral staff.
● Information from parents/carers.
● Information gathered from external agencies.
● Information gathered from attainment monitoring.
Most children and young people will have their special educational needs
met in mainstream schools through good classroom practice. These are called Universal Strategies.
For some students however, there will be a need to provide support additional to and different from that which is available within the classroom. For these students we will produce a SEN Support Plan that describes the provision that we will make to meet a child’s special educational needs and
agreed outcomes. Parents and carers will be fully involved in this process.
A small percentage of children and young people with significant learning difficulties might need an assessment that could lead to an Education, Health and Care Plan. Full details can be found on the Local Offer website.
- The support which SEND pupils receive is regularly reviewed, monitored and
- evaluated through the following means:
- Whole school student/parent dialogue.
- Calendared SENDCo self-evaluation monitoring including learning walks
- and work scrutiny.
- Evaluation of Interventions
- Parents’ Evenings
- Regular Data Analysis and Teacher Reporting
- Annual Review Process
- Support staff dialogue
At Dene Academy, we aim to ensure that students who are believed to have a SEND need are identified and assessed as early as possible. On entry to Year 7, all students are assessed on their reading and comprehension and spelling ability through a standardised test.
Students that have Significantly Below and Below Average Reading ages are then tested further to see if they are suitable candidates for reading interventions.
If you child has an identified SEND need, we will contact you in the first half term and discuss their SEND plan with you. We will also speak to your child about how their school journey has begun. Reviews will then happen at termly intervals.
If your child has made progress, and no longer needs a higher level of support than universal teaching, we will talk to you about a move onto monitoring report. If this is successful, there monitoring passport will end.
It is important to note that not all students referred to the SEND Team will be SEND students; any support and guidance given may be short, medium or long term.
