Archive: November 2020

Real Training and Whole School SEND’s FREE Online SEND Reviewer Training course

At the end of 2019, Real Training and Whole School SEND partnered to offer the enormously successful, free Effective SEN Support Provision – Middle Leaders course. We are delighted to announce the launch of a second free course, aimed at all educational professionals – the Online SEND Reviewer Training. This course is now available to access through Campus Online.

It is the only fully-online version of the SEND Reviewer Training course. It will enable more people within your setting to conduct quality reviews of SEND provision, thus empowering them to improve their practices.

About the Online SEND Reviewer Training course

The SEND Review course provides a framework that enables educational professionals to evaluate the effectiveness of current SEND provision. This is through a structured self-evaluation and peer review with another educational setting. The aim is to identify areas of potential improvement, and create and review improvement plans.

The theoretical content is delivered fully online, hosted on our bespoke virtual learning environment, Campus Online. Furthermore, the course is free, and you will have access to its content for one year, following your enrolment.

How will you and your setting benefit?

As mentioned, the goal of this course is to enable educational professionals within a setting to understand, review and improve their SEND provision through self and peer-to-peer assessment. This results in a strong and supportive community of SEN professionals, providing the support and encouragement to continually improve SEN provision.

By completing this free course, you will develop an understanding the aims of the SEND Review Process, use the review to drive school improvement and execute the six stages of the SEND Review Process.

The course structure

Delegates will be paired with another participant, known as ‘SEND Professional Partners’, to train together online, and subsequently to undertake the school reviews together. This enables peer-to-peer use of the SEND Review Tool across two (or more) settings, and facilitates development of professional practice between the ‘SEND Professional Partners’.

Using the Whole School SEND Review Tool and with the support of the course ‘Professional Partner’, delegates will undertake a review of their own school SEND. They will then reciprocate this process in the partner’s school. In addition, we ensure that you are allocated an appropriate partner where you will be able to share similar challenges, experiences and best practice.

Within this structure, SEND Professional Partners will work together as ‘critical friends’, reviewing each other’s provision, learning from good practice and supportively challenging areas for development.

‘SEND Professional Partners’ will arrange to visit each other’s provision to support each other undertaking the review in each school. Where geographical or other factors preclude travel, the review discussions can be undertaken remotely via video conferencing to discuss practice, gather evidence, share good practice from other settings and think through areas of the framework which are not yet demonstrated. Where possible, we aim to partner you with participants from a similar setting (e.g. primary, secondary, special and alternative provision) as well as geographical location.

Am I eligible?

This course is aimed at SENCOs and SEN leaders working in educational settings, looking for the necessary tools to work through the various stages of SEND reviews (preparatory, during and post-review). From there, they will consider and action the outcomes in an effective and meaningful way.

How to book

Simply visit the Online SEND Reviewer Training page on our website, where you can pre-register your interest. It takes a matter of seconds to do, with no complicated forms to complete. We will provide you with your login to Campus Online, and you will be able to access the course as soon as you have this.

The Professional Tutoring Partnership (PTP) has been appointed to deliver dedicated tuition to over 4,500 disadvantaged children. This partnership brings together extensive experience in the education of pupils with special educational needs. The Professional Tutoring Partnership is run by Real Group Ltd in collaboration with Patoss, British Dyslexia Association, Dyslexia Action, The Dyslexia Guild and Helen Arkell Dyslexia Charity. It will work alongside 31 other organisations to offer tutoring (subsidised by 75 per cent), as well as training, support and mentoring to tutors themselves, to schools across England.

We are delighted to be centrally involved in this exciting and important initiative.

The National Tutoring Programme is part of the government’s investment in schools to help underprivileged children to reduce the learning gap to their peers.  The school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic have exacerbated this gap. Distance learning has been particularly challenging for those with specific learning difficulties, and those without access to adequate learning tools.

The Partnership underwent a rigorous assessment and review process. It met and exceeded criteria including their ability to work with schools delivering curriculum relevant tutoring and scope to reach as many disadvantaged pupils as possible. It will work within primary, secondary and special schools across East England, London, North East, North West, South East, South West and the West Midlands.

Dr Mark Turner, Managing Director of Real Group*, and Project Director of the Professional Tutoring Partnership said:

“We’re so excited to join the national effort to widen access to high-quality tutoring for disadvantaged pupils who need it most. Our organisation underwent a rigorous criteria assessment and we’re now ready to deliver high-quality tutoring to complement the incredible work going on in classrooms up and down the country. We can’t wait to start making a difference to those who need it most.”

Alison Farmer, Educational Psychologist and part of the PTP Management Team adds “Effective tuition changes children’s perception of themselves as learners.  I have observed the change that this makes to the confidence and enthusiasm for learning in school that this brings for young people.”

For more information on the Professional Tutoring Partnership can be found on our website.

* Real Group is a group of companies which includes Real Training, Dyslexia Action, The Dyslexia Guild, as well as Real Psychology, Real e-Learning and Dyslexia Action Shop.