Additional Needs
At Spalding Grammar School we are committed to providing an inclusive education for all our students. Our Additional Needs Department plays a key role in supporting individual students in attaining high levels of academic achievement, fulfilling personal potential and building personal wellbeing.
The Additional Needs team, led by Mrs Johnson, supports all students with statements of special educational needs alongside other students who have barriers that hold back their learning. We are very experienced in working to secure the best for students: assisting those with weaker literacy or study skills, aiding those whose difficulties are more behavioural or social, and mentoring any who respond more successfully to a more individualised approach.
If your son requires support from our Additional Needs team, in either the short or long term, we will find the best way to work with him. This might be through in-class support, lunchtime sessions or after-school clubs. We might also bring in outside support through our established links with specialist teams such as Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS), the Educational Psychology Service, the Social Communication (including Autism) Outreach Service and the Speech and Language Service.
Of course, for some students, additional needs come in the form of requiring greater challenge. This is an academic school and we expect all students to achieve at the highest levels; however, some will cope with the demands more easily than others and those students need support too. We have a policy for determining, within individual subjects, who those ‘Gifted and Talented’ students are, and our response does not simply entail giving them more of the same work to do. We are committed to providing suitable differentiation within lessons such that all students can benefit from their time in the classroom.
There is specific provision within the curriculum for our ablest mathematicians to take an Additional Maths GCSE and, beyond the curriculum, there are many clubs which have an academic focus designed to challenge the more able.