SEND
All staff at Atlantic Academy are here to support students. Should you have any questions about your child’s progress, or wish to discuss any aspect of Academy life, please contact your child’s coach in the first instance.
Our policies on supporting students with additional needs, including the Trust Accessibility Plan, can be found on the Athena Learning Trust website.
Social and Emotional Support
We are pleased to announce developments within our support staff team, to include dedicated provision for students who are struggling to access learning due to social and emotional needs. Our nurture room opened in January 2020, and offers students the opportunity to talk, and participate in group or 1:1 therapeutic sessions, aimed at increasing young people’s ability to express their feelings and develop their own strategies for resilience.
Diagnostic assessments have helped up to better understanding young people, and we have already seen the impact on behaviour and pupils ability to share their emotions and identify solutions. This builds on our Academy goal to ‘develop the whole learner’, and the student’s own priorities to improve mental health provision in the local area.
Working with parents and carers - education in partnership
As a small secondary school with around 260 students, we are uniquely placed to nurture very close partnerships with parents and carers. We try hard to provide parents/carers with the information they need to support their child’s learning.
Meetings and contact with parents usually take place within the normal cycle of the school year but we recognise that contact with parents of pupils with SEND needs may need to take place more frequently. Students with an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) will have a formal annual review meeting to discuss their support and progress but in practice, contact between all parents and school will be much more frequent. Parents are actively encouraged to contact the relevant Support Team (details below) whenever they have concerns or queries. We are always very happy to meet with parents or have a telephone conversation.
SEND Contact Details
Rachel Vowles