Alresford Primary School

Special Educational Needs & Disabilities

Carolyn Panting is our Deputy Headteacher and SENCO, if you wish to discuss your child's needs or provision with her then please make an appointment at the office or she can be contacted on her work email: cpanting@alresford.essex.sch.uk

Parent Coffee Mornings:

We are thrilled at the success and attendance for our Parent Coffee Mornings. It was so nice seeing so many of you across the last academic year.

Coffee mornings will start again this academic year, on 18th September 2026. Stef and Julie-Ann (Family Support Workers from TFF) will be leading these and Miss Panting will be popping along too. If you have any topics you would like to see covered, please just pop it on an email to me. I will update the new topics on here as soon as I have finalised them. Please also keep an eye on the school newsletter for more updates.

***Great News!***

We are so proud to have renewed our ELKLAN Communication Friendly Status. All of our staff attended specialist training and we were originally awarded our certificates in July 2022. In May 2026, we went for our renewal and successfully gained this through the hard work and dedication of the staff.

Miss Panting and Mrs Wright are our school Communication Champion Leads. We are all proud to promote speech, language and communication across the school. We are currently working on our Communication Friendly GOLD award and hope to bring you exciting news about this in the future.

We are also the proud leads of one of Tendring's only Communication Hubs for Speech and Language. We work with dozens of pre-schools, nursery settings, childminders and primary schools to improve speech and language outcomes for children with SEND.

Developments at Alresford this year:

Last year Mrs Plummer and Miss Panting worked behind the scenes to secure Inclusion Funding. Our bid was centred around Sensory and Emotional Regulation. We are thrilled to announce that this was successful!

We have started 2026 academic year off with a bang - having the first part of the Inclusion Project installed. We now have a sensory trail installed under our trees. Installation happened over the school holidays and was intentionally placed under the trees as you enter the site so that we can use it to regulate at the beginning and end of the day. Look out for more information on the school newsletter.

The next part of the project is to have a Wellbeing and Regulation space built. We have a cabin build booked for November 2026 and we cannot wait to see this develop our provision further.

Local information for parents:

SPACE offer parent webinars and training on a range of different topics. These are free to access and come with no obligation. - click here to follow the link: https://parent-send-support.essex.gov.uk/whats/whats/online-group-sessions

Parent Peer support - 1:1 conversations with a Peer Educator. Self referral below:

https://parent-send-support.essex.gov.uk/whats/one-one-support

SEND Information:

Please see below for more information on topics we have covered.

Below are links to support on speech sound difficulties:

Below are helpful links to support the topic of Dyslexia and Specific Literacy Difficulties (SLD):