ALP Schools recognise that as a school for special educational needs, we need a whole school approach to communication by ensuring that all learners communicate to the best of their ability.
Our schools are all signed up to the “Communication Commitment” via I CAN – https://ican.org.uk/
For children and young people, good communication skills are essential for learning and making friends, with strong language and communication skills linked to better outcomes in school and beyond. Communication skills impact widely across all areas of development, on learning, behaviour, and social and emotional development. By ensuring a focus on communication throughout our schools, we help all our learners to communicate more effectively, including those who may struggle with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN).
To us, the Communication Commitment is useful as a simple model to demonstrate how as schools we support the I Can ethos and use a practical model that explicitly shows a real commitment to communication.
Simply put we focus on assessment of learners and how well communication is supported in the environment and:
We have Action Plans with 5 areas to address and set targets, these are reviewed and repeated where necessary.
- School leadership
- Workforce development
- Being a communication friendly school
- Supporting pupils with SLCN
- Engagement with parents, families and employers.
Each of our schools has a designated person responsible for Speech and Language, and these tend to lead on our commitment to communication.