Special Educational Needs

General Provision

Every child at Airthrie benefits from small class sizes and a home away from home environment to help them thrive. Teachers carefully adapt tasks to match individual abilities and provide in-class support. 

If your child is facing barriers to learning, we take a highly responsive approach. We offer tailored classroom adaptations, qualified teachers, teaching assistants, and specialist interventions. Currently, we provide support for:

• Speech and language needs
• Sensory needs
• Specific learning difficulty friendly teaching

We also offer some in-house specialist assessments and support you whilst you may seek further assessment for your child. During the admissions process you can meet our SENDCo, Mrs Honesty Walker, to discuss how we can meet your child's needs.

Universal Provision for every child

Every child in every classroom

With small class sizes, and the support of experienced teachers and teaching assistants, we provide a truly inclusive classroom experience. Our teachers get to know each pupil personally, spend time with them individually each day, and continuously adapt their teaching to meet every child's unique learning pace.

We further enhance classroom learning through the expertise of our Teaching Assistants, SENDCo, Speech and Language Therapist and Occupational Therapist.

We are currently working with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) specialists, Moore House School. Through a year-long partnership we are working with their specialist teachers and Speech and Language therapists to develop our teaching and learning skill set. This will directly benefit our children with DLD, dyslexia, dyspraxia and other Speech Language and Communication needs.

BEAR Plan

At Dean Close Airthrie, every child has an individual plan tailored to their needs. While you may be familiar with My Plans, My Plan+ or Individual Education Plans, our BEAR Plan follows the same recognised "assess, plan, do, review" process. This approach reflects best practice and meets the requirements for referrals and EHCP applications. Find out more here.

Onsite Speech and Language and Occupational Therapy

At Airthrie our small nurturing environment means that teachers work closely with families to identify needs. This is supported through our BEAR plan process.

We can offer observations and further assessments to screen for possible Special Needs. Our SENDCo can spend time with children and parents so that the individuality of needs can be expressed accurately.

We have weekly visits from our own speech and language therapist and occupational therapist. If required, they can both offer you a comprehensive assessment of your child's needs, deliver 1:1 or group therapy sessions and provide practical advice to support learning and development at both home and school. We work closely to implement their specialist advice for children in the classroom.