Improving SEND in Norfolk

We want children and young people to:  

• Be encouraged and supported to learn and develop in their places of education  
• Have learning opportunities and experiences that help them to become the best that they can be

Our key priorities

Our key priorities for children and young people under the theme of learning and development are: 

• My education meets my needs and the needs of my family 
• My family and I feel welcome, safe and included in my place of education 
• All the adults in my place of education can meet my needs 
• I can share my views about my education and feel that they are listened to 
• I am provided with exciting experiences that help me learn

What we have done  

To meet our key priorities for learning and development, we have:

• Strengthened support in mainstream education and increased specialist capacity for children and young people with SEND. This is to ensure they can flourish wherever they are learning.  
• Introduced multi-professional Teams Around the School (TAS) to provide wraparound support and access to specialist expertise from:
  • Educational Psychology and Specialist Support (EPSS) service
  • School and community teams
  • Specialist outreach and advisory service for children with higher SEND needs
• Introduced Zone Inclusion Partnerships (ZIP). This is to bring schools together in each of Norfolk's 15 zones to share best practice on inclusion.  
• Worked with all Norfolk mainstream schools to assess their provision and the quality of their SEN support plans
• Created a framework to help schools to better identify children's needs. This resulted in us creating 21,400 individualised profiles of children with SEND, which:
  • Improved our understanding of complexity of need across Norfolk
  • Enabled us to make better planning and funding decisions
• Supported 472 children through Enhanced SEND Provisions (ESPs). 90 of whom successfully transitioned back into mainstream classrooms. ESPs are small group provisions run by schools. Each one is unique to the cohort of children and is led by a teacher with an adapted but ambitious curriculum. 
• Created 110 new places in Specialist Resource Bases (SRBs) in mainstream schools. This enabled 61 per cent of children attending to receive specialist support less than 10 miles from home.  
• Identified how Early Identification of Need (EIN) data can be better used to understand the needs of young children and improve the multi-agency approach to early intervention.  The number of pre-school children flagged through EIN has almost tripled since 2017 rising from 114 to 327 in 2024. 
• Set up a 'Literacy for All' project to support schools to deliver specialist teaching for children with SEND
• Provided new community cafes and drop-in events to offer more support for families who are home educating a child with SEND
• Supported children and young people to produce top tips guidance for schools on how to be more inclusive. Two new posters called 'We learn best when' and 'Dream teacher and teaching assistant' have been created to share with schools. 
• Supported young people to create their 'Dream School' using Minecraft. This helped them to express their views on education, friendships and needs. This is being used to influence head teachers and SEND coordinators to improve school environments for pupils with SEND.   
• Trained and provided targeted feedback and advice to 40 Norfolk schools through the Partnership for Inclusion of Neurodiversity in Schools (PINS) programme
• Delivered 57 participation sessions across education and community settings in 2024-2025. These reached 431 children and young people.
• Delivered participation training to 300 professionals. This has influenced and empowered them to listen and act on the voices of pupils. 

 What we plan to do next 

• A further 11 SRBs are in development. There is work continuing to expand existing special schools to create new places. The Fred Nicholson Complex Needs School will expand by 27 places and move to a new state-of-the-art school for 224 children in Swaffham. This is due to open in Spring 2026.  
• We are continuing to strengthen TAS and ZIP meetings in all school zones. This will involve working closely with health teams and continually improving this support from feedback.
• We will support more schools to:
  • Move any internal small group provisions they have to the ESP model; or
  • Develop new ESPs supported by a new networking group and self-serve toolkit 
• There is new support for children at risk of exclusion. Local Planning Partnerships (LPPs) are being set up for all secondary schools as part of a new three-tier approach. It includes:
  • New outreach support for children in Year 6
  • Schools working together
  • A network of 19 new bases and centres at secondary schools offering them short-term placements and interventions. All secondary schools will have access to this.
• We will plan for and support children with an early identification of need when they start school
• We will hear the views of children, parent carers and school staff. This is to understand how their experiences of SEN support align with their school SEN information report. We will share their views with the multi-teams around the school to inform improvements.  
• We will introduce a new peer review for schools to moderate each other's Inclusion and Provision Self Evaluation Framework (IPSEF). We will identify where improvements can be made to meet pupils needs.  
• We will extend the PINS programme to a further 30 schools in Norfolk in 2025-2026. The previous data and intelligence have informed:
  • The training we offer
  • The targeted support and services commissioned to address local neurodiversity needs