Special Educational Needs

Special Educational Needs – what does it mean?

A child has special educational needs if he or she finds it more difficult to learn than most other children of about the same age and needs more support to learn. Many children will have special educational needs of some kind at some point in their school life. It is nearly always possible to provide appropriate help and support within local mainstream schools and it is Norfolk’s policy to do so wherever possible. The standard admission rules will still apply.

A small number of children have longer-term special educational needs which may be due to:

• Physical disability that they may have had from birth, due to injury or illness.

• Visual impairment where children are partially sighted or blind.

• Hearing impairment where hearing loss affects speech or makes it difficult for the child to communicate with others.

• Medical or health conditions that may hinder a child's progress or require treatment that interferes with their education.

• Emotional or behavioural difficulty which may include difficulties in concentrating on work or mixing with other children.

• Generalised learning difficulty affecting progress in school.

• Specific Learning Difficulty with reading, writing or mathematics.

• Speech, language or communication problem that may be due to delayed speech and language development or more specific reasons