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Important update from TheSchoolRun

For the past 13 years, TheSchoolRun has been run by a small team of mums working from home, dedicated to providing quality educational resources to primary school parents. Unfortunately, rising supplier costs and falling revenue have made it impossible for us to continue operating, and we’ve had to make the difficult decision to close. The good news: We’ve arranged for another educational provider to take over many of our resources. These will be hosted on a new portal, where the content will be updated and expanded to support your child’s learning.

What this means for subscribers:

  • Your subscription is still active, and for now, you can keep using the website as normal — just log in with your usual details to access all our articles and resources*.
  • In a few months, all resources will move to the new portal. You’ll continue to have access there until your subscription ends. We’ll send you full details nearer the time.
  • As a thank you for your support, we’ll also be sending you 16 primary school eBooks (worth £108.84) to download and keep.

A few changes to be aware of:

  • The Learning Journey weekly email has ended, but your child’s plan will still be updated on your dashboard each Monday. Just log in to see the recommended worksheets.
  • The 11+ weekly emails have now ended. We sent you all the remaining emails in the series at the end of March — please check your inbox (and spam folder) if you haven’t seen them. You can also follow the full programme here: 11+ Learning Journey.

If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected]. Thank you for being part of our journey it’s been a privilege to support your family’s learning.

*If you need to reset your password, it will still work as usual. Please check your spam folder if the reset email doesn’t appear in your inbox.

How educational psychologists can support SEN children

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What is an educational psychologist and how might they help your child? We chat to consultant child educational psychologist Laverne Antrobus to find out.

Why might children need to see an educational psychologist?

In a situation where a parent or school feels that a child's learning isn't progressing in the way they would want it to, and the child is becoming quite stuck with learning, an educational psychologist would be consulted.

How does an educational psychologist support a child?

An educational psychologist's task is gathering as much information about an individual child as possible. So they would begin by taking quite a detailed history from the parent. They want to know how a child has progressed through all of the developmental milestones, walking and talking for example, and then find out when things changed.

They would then go into the nursery or school environment and do a very basic observation, too, where they will look at a child's interactions with other children, levels of language, and how they are generally - if they are confident, what things can trigger a change in behaviour. Often you can see a child in an environment behaving calmly until they need to sit down and begin to do a task and you realise it is at that point that they really struggle.

Lastly, is a consultation with the class teacher and the staff working with the child to get a broader sense of what the child is like in school.

Are there any things that parents can do to support their child with SEN?

Each child develops at different rates and you have got to be able to pace learning at home. It is also important to maintain good communication with your child's teacher because the worst thing that can happen is that parents don't raise their concerns with the school. Schools should have an open door policy where you can go in and observe your child and discuss your child's needs with teaching staff.

It is the teacher's job to keep an eye on the levels of sociability in children, so you need to ask about whether they have friends and a group of people they can rely on. Then you will be ready to talk about learning more formally. You have to decide as a parent what bits are important to you. The thing to ask is if there are any problems - if their learning is not progressing in the way the teacher expected them to at this stage. Remember to take notes when you chat with the teacher, it may raise further questions.

 

Other resources:
If you want more advice from Laverne Antrobus, read her book Aint Misbehavin'  (£9.99, Prentice Hall Life).