Inclusion at Boarshaw Primary School
At Boarshaw Primary School, inclusion is at the heart of everything we do.
We believe that every child belongs, every child can achieve and every child should have access to the right support at the right time.
We recognise that children may experience different barriers to learning, participation, attendance and wellbeing at different points in their school journey. Our responsibility is to understand those barriers and respond to them.
Our aim is to:
Identify needs early → Provide the right support → Review the impact → Adapt when needed
We have developed clear Barrier to Learning Pathways across school. Each pathway follows a four-tier approach, allowing support to increase, adapt or become more specialist according to the individual needs of the child.
Click here to view the pathways
Our ambition is not simply for children to be present in school. We want every pupil to belong, participate, learn, develop independence and achieve.
💜 Our Inclusion Promise
At Boarshaw Primary School, inclusion means that we will:
Notice when a child is experiencing a barrier.
Listen to children and their families.
Understand the need behind the barrier.
Adapt our provision.
Support the child at the appropriate level.
Work together with families and professionals.
Review whether our support is making a difference.
Remain ambitious for every child.
Because at Boarshaw Primary School every child belongs, every child can achieve, every moment matters
It means children being able to:
💜 Belong
📚 Learn
🗣️ Communicate
🤝 Participate
🌱 Develop independence
⭐ Achieve
Every child belongs. Every child matters. Every moment matters.
Meet Our Inclusion Team
Our Inclusion Team works alongside pupils, families, teachers, teaching assistants and external professionals to identify barriers and coordinate appropriate support.
Mrs. Abigail Facchin- Inclusion Lead - Leads the school’s strategic approach to inclusion and works with staff, pupils, parents and external professionals to ensure barriers to learning are identified and addressed.
Mr. Rory Armstrong - Inclusion Teaching Assistant - Provides targeted and individual support to pupils experiencing barriers to learning, participation and wellbeing.
Mrs. Amanda Evans - Children’s Welfare Officer - Supports children and families with welfare, attendance, safeguarding and wider vulnerabilities, helping to strengthen the important relationship between home and school.
Mrs. Laura Windsor - SEND Teaching Assistant - Provides targeted SEND support in our internal provision and works alongside teachers and the wider Inclusion Team to help pupils with additional needs access learning and develop independence.
Our Four-Tier Approach to Inclusion
We recognise that one approach will not meet every child’s needs.
Our Barrier to Learning Pathways therefore follow four levels of support:
Tier 1 - Universal
Inclusive provision for everyone.
High-quality teaching, inclusive classroom environments, strong relationships, early identification and reasonable adjustments form the foundation of our provision.
Tier 2 -Targeted
Additional help when it is needed.
Children may access additional small-group or individual interventions alongside their usual classroom provision.
Tier 3 -Targetd Plus
More personalised and specialist support.
Where barriers continue, support may become more individualised and include assessment, specialist programmes or advice from other professionals.
Tier 4 – Specialist
Highly individualised provision for children with significant or complex barriers.
This may include specialist professional involvement, personalised packages of provision and multi-agency working. Children do not necessarily need to move through every tier. We consider the individual child and provide support according to their needs and barriers.
Our pathways help us ask:
What is getting in the way? → What have we tried? → What difference has it made? → What needs to happen next?
🎨 Nurture provision - Drawing, Talking and Creative Support
We recognise that children do not always communicate their experiences through words.
Creative approaches can provide opportunities for children to express themselves, build relationships and explore emotions in a safe environment.
Where appropriate, children may therefore access Drawing and Talking, therapeutic or wellbeing-focused art activities and other creative interventions as part of a wider package of support.
These approaches do not replace specialist mental health or therapeutic services where these are required.
🌍Supporting Pupils with English as an Additional Language (EAL)
At Boarshaw, we are proud of the languages, cultures and experiences represented within our school community.
We recognise multilingualism as a strength.
Being an EAL learner does not mean that a child has SEND. Children learning English may require additional support to access the curriculum while they develop confidence and proficiency in English.
We aim to ensure that pupils can access learning without losing or undervaluing their home language and cultural identity.
Our EAL provision may include -
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welcoming signs and information displayed in different languages around school
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bilingual and multilingual classroom resources
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visual timetables, symbols, photographs and practical resources
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pre-teaching important vocabulary
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modelling language and sentence structures
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opportunities for talk before writing
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carefully planned peer and buddy support
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bilingual books and texts
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multilingual reading and translation pens
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technology to support translation and communication
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access to FlashAcademy
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additional language interventions where appropriate
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assessment and monitoring of English language development
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working closely with parents and families
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celebrating home languages, cultures and traditions throughout the curriculum.
Teachers consider carefully whether a difficulty is related to learning English as an additional language or an underlying additional need.
Where concerns remain, the Inclusion Team will work with teachers and families to explore the child’s needs further.
💜 C4C – Children for Children
We recognise that some children need additional support with their social, emotional and mental wellbeing in order to be ready to learn.
Our C4C approach provides a safe and supportive network around the child.
Relationships are central to this provision. Children need adults who notice them, listen to them and help them understand and manage their emotions.
Depending upon individual need, children may access:
Nurture Provision
A safe, predictable and supportive environment where children can develop relationships, emotional regulation, confidence, communication and readiness for learning.
Our aim is always to help children develop the skills they need to participate successfully and increasingly independently within their classroom and wider school community.
This is offered in 'The Ocean for pupils Years 1 -3 and in 'The Bay' for pupils Years 4 - 6.
Thrive
Thrive approaches may be used to help us understand and respond to children’s social and emotional development.
Support is personalised and focuses on building emotional wellbeing, resilience, relationships and regulation.
Natter Group
Our Natter Group provides a safe space for children to talk, listen, develop friendships and explore feelings and experiences. These meetings take place with our Children's Welfare Officer.
For some children, simply having a trusted adult and protected opportunity to talk can make an important difference.
C4C provision is reviewed regularly so that support changes as children’s confidence, independence and needs change.
🤝 Supporting Vulnerable Children
We recognise that children’s experiences outside school can have a significant impact on their ability to feel safe, regulate their emotions, attend school and engage with learning.
Our definition of vulnerability is therefore deliberately broad.
It may include children:
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currently known to children’s social care
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previously known to children’s social care
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refugees or asylum seekers
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affected by bereavement or loss
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experiencing housing or financial difficulties
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experiencing difficulties with attendance
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affected by domestic abuse or other adverse childhood experiences
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who are looked after or previously looked after
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facing another significant barrier to learning or participation.
We do not lower our expectations for vulnerable children. Instead, we ask:
“What does this child need from us in order to succeed?”
Support is individualised and may include:
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a consistent trusted adult
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regular check-ins
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pastoral and welfare support
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access to our nurture provision
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Thrive
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Drawing and Talking
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therapeutic or wellbeing-focused art activities
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carefully planned transitions
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emotional regulation support
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support with friendships and relationships
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attendance support
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breakfast or practical family support where appropriate
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increased communication between home and school
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multi-agency working
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referrals to external services where appropriate.
Information is shared sensitively and only where appropriate, ensuring that staff who need to understand a child’s circumstances can respond with compassion, consistency and appropriate professional curiosity.
🌈 SEND
Children with SEND are supported through the same principle:
Our SEND provision begins with high-quality, inclusive and adaptive classroom teaching.
Where children require additional support, we use our four-tier pathway to consider appropriate targeted, Targeted Plus or specialist provision.
We work through the graduated approach:
Assess → Plan → Do → Review
We work closely with parents and carers and, where appropriate, involve external professionals.
Having SEND does not mean lowering expectations.
We make adaptations to enable children to access an ambitious curriculum alongside their peers, while recognising that some pupils may require highly personalised provision.
Our SEND approach is informed by the statutory SEND Code of Practice: 0–25 years.
🛤️ Our Barrier to Learning Pathways
We have developed pathways for the different barriers children may experience.
“What barrier is this child experiencing and what can we do to remove or reduce it?”
Each pathway uses our four-tier model:
UNIVERSAL
What should ordinarily be available to all children?
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TARGETED
What additional support could help?
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TARGETED PLUS
What personalised or specialist advice/intervention is required?
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SPECIALIST
Does the child require highly individualised or multi-agency specialist provision?
These pathways give staff a consistent framework while ensuring that the individual child remains at the centre of decision-making.
👨👩👧 Working with Families
Parents and carers know their children incredibly well.
We therefore believe that effective inclusion depends upon genuine partnership between:
CHILD + FAMILY + SCHOOL + PROFESSIONALS
Families should understand what support their child is receiving, why it has been selected and what we hope it will achieve.
We will listen to parents’ concerns and involve families in decisions about significant changes to provision.
Where language may be a barrier to parental participation, we will consider appropriate translation, interpretation or accessible communication.
📚 Evidence-Informed Inclusion
Our approach to inclusion is informed by national statutory guidance, inspection expectations and educational research.
SEND code of practice - Our SEND practice follows the statutory SEND Code of Practice: 0–25 years, including the graduated approach to identifying and meeting children’s needs.
Ofsted - The Ofsted inspection framework places inclusion firmly within consideration of school effectiveness.
Our approach reflects the expectation that leaders understand the needs of pupils who may face barriers to learning and wellbeing and make appropriate adaptations to curriculum and teaching.
This includes:
pupils with SEND • disadvantaged pupils • children known or previously known to children’s social care • and pupils experiencing other barriers to learning or wellbeing.
Education Endowment Foundation - We use evidence, including research from the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), alongside our professional knowledge of individual children when selecting and reviewing approaches.
This includes evidence relating to:
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high-quality teaching
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oral language and communication
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reading and literacy
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metacognition and self-regulation
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social and emotional learning
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parental engagement
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targeted academic support
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effective deployment of additional adults.