The resources on this page focus on the quality of teaching, learning and assessment.
You’ll find resources to help you plan and deliver learning to ensure your learners achieve their aspirations; including planning, identifying learning outcomes, differentiating and developing English and maths skills. Teaching and learning has four sub-menus: Digital technologies, Maths, English and ESOL, RARPA (Recognising and Recording Progress and Achievement), and Safeguarding, and specific resources on these themes can be found at the end of the page.
The SEND reforms impact all providers to ensure the best outcomes for all learners with SEND. This self-study interactive module (created in Powerpoint) provides information, examples of effective practice and resources to help you deliver effective personalised study programmes that support young people with SEND to achieve positive life outcomes. You will be encouraged to reflect on your own practice and to use the information provided to improve study programmes within your organisation. This module is relevant for providers working with all learners with SEND whether in discrete or mainstream provision, and with or without an Education Health and Care (EHC) Plan. The resource was created by by Natspec.
At Derby College Group, Centre for Excellence in SEND (community) they want every learner to achieve their ambitions. They work with their learners to develop personalised study programmes to improve their outcomes. They’ve created a series of videos to explain what personalised study programmes and the benefits to individuals. They use the videos to help new learners, parents and carers see that they will be fully supported at Derby College Group, and within professional development for our staff.
Co-creating the curriculum is a great way to involve learners in deciding what to learn and how they might be taught. It can help you personalise study programmes and provide an excellent context for helping learners with SEND to take more control over their lives as they practise making decisions and expressing preferences about their learning.
The co-creating the curriculum with learners with SEND toolkit has been designed to help curriculum managers and tutors in FE settings explore co-creation, explain the concept to colleagues and engage their learners with SEND in co-creating their curriculum in a meaningful way. Watch the video to find out more about co-creation.
To achieve the best outcomes for learners with SEND, partnership working is essential. In this webinar, Co-creation with our local authority and parent carer group, City College Norwich, share the key principles of co-creation and how they work with both the local authority and their parent carer group to support learners with SEND in their community.
Learning support assistants (LSAs) are the most commonly used form of support in the FE sector – and the most expensive. That makes it especially important for providers to deploy LSAs efficiently and effectively to positively impact learner progress and independence. This in-house development activity will help you consider how to make the most of the LSAs in your setting.
The resource, Making great use of LSAs in FE settings, has been designed to be facilitated by managers with SEND responsibilities and undertaken by teams of tutors and LSAs working together. In the pack, you will find facilitator notes, a presentation and a hand-out. Managers are advised to read through the facilitator notes for guidance on using these materials to set up and run an interactive CPD session for their team. The zipped folder contains the pack and everything you need to run the session.
Introduction to managing positive behaviour in curriculum for inclusion. This webinar explores the differences of managing and promoting positive behaviour of learners with SEND and Derby College share their approaches.
How do we make it more likely that we create an environment so that learning is an emotionally positive experience?
How does our own behaviour impact on those around us?
This guide, Understanding and promoting positive behaviour in the FE sector, created with Pivotal Education and Works 4 U provides some ideas to support those working in the FE sector to ensure that learning is an emotionally nurturing experience increasing the likelihood of learner success.
Some learners don’t want to be singled out as needing extra help or to have a support staff member visibly assigned to them. Enabling learners with additional needs to make good progress is as much about differentiated, inclusive teaching and learning as it is about high-quality learning support.
To help teachers feel confident about applying inclusive practices and to have at their fingertips an array of strategies to use with individual learners, Milton Keynes College produced this resource, Supporting learners with additional needs: A three-tier approach, but the tips provided can help support learners across the sector.
Community of practice engagement and resilience is a webinar delivered by City College Norwich in which they share a model designed by educational psychologists to understand and support emotional literacy, promoting positive experiences and building resilience for our learners. The webinar explored how they have adapted this model to working with difficult-to-engage and retain learners and how they are working with their local authority to help their NEET community engage with education.
Nasen and ETF, as part of the Whole School Send programme, have been working with the National Development Team for Inclusion to focus on preparation for adulthood for learners with SEND. In this co-hosted webinar, Partnership working with schools and colleges for effective outcomes for learners with SEND, exploring how strategically learners with SEND can be prepared adequately for adulthood, including a smooth transition from school to college
Partnership working to prepare learners for adulthood YouTube video
Pathways to independence is a webinar delivered by City College Norwich in which they share their effective practice to prepare learners to transition independently into the community.
Preparation for Adulthood- Schools and Colleges working in Partnership – A webinar delivered by City College Norwich looking at effective working with schools and colleges to prepare learners from the earliest of years for adulthood. Collaborative and influential working to improve what’s in place for learners.
Weston College, Centre for Excellence in SEND (people) have been using 3D interactive tours to assist learners manage their anxiety around transition to the college environment. Use of this technology has benefitted other areas of the college business too.
They delivered a Interactive tour to aid transition webinar to explore the use of 3D interactive tours as a tool to support both staff working in inclusive practice and SEND teams, and learners with a SEND need.
Competition activity is a great way to raise aspirations, improve learners’ skills and employment prospects, strengthen learning programmes and introduce an element of excitement into the vocational curriculum. Providers who have been exploring the use of competition with learners with SEND report that it is just as beneficial for their learners – and easy to implement.
Our new toolkit, Using competition activity In the vocational curriculum with learners with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), provides you with a range of resources that will help you to embed competition activity into your curriculum in a way that enthuses both staff and learners. It also gives you some tips on getting employers involved.
