According to the SEND Code of Practice, supporting children and young people with special educational needs via the graduated approach includes the use of a four-part cycle of ‘assess, plan, do and review’. Through this cycle, earlier decisions and actions are revisited, refined and revised, with a growing understanding of the child or young person’s needs. This enables an understanding of the support required for the child or young person to make good progress and secure good outcomes. It draws on more detailed approaches, more frequent review and more specialist expertise in successive cycles in order to match interventions to an individual child or young person’s needs.

What? 

• Assess: the educational setting will assess the needs of the child or young person. The assessment should be reviewed regularly, with specific dates set for the next review.

• Plan: the educational setting then plans the provision (the views of the family or young people must be included)

• Do: the provision is then put into action and progress monitored

• Review: the provision is reviewed at least three times a year to monitor the pupil’s progress and identify support that has worked. As a result of reviews, provision may be changed, continued or stopped.

Who is involved? 

• Class or form teacher, SENCo, subject teacher (whoever knows the pupil the best and this may involve more than one teacher)

• Parents or carers

• Individual student

Why? 

• Enables early identification 

• Schools have a clear understanding of strength and need for individual students 

• Parents or carers have a clear understanding of the strengths and needs of individual students 

• Learners are helped to understand their own barriers to learning and to value their achievements 

• Progress can be shown over time

• All children and young people are entitled to high-quality, personalised teaching

How? 

It is the decision of each individual school how they wish to administer the graduated response and how to record and monitor their assess, plan, do, review cycles. There is no standard borough template provided.