UPDATES

Conference follow ups

Highlights
It was really encouraging to hear about all of the great practice that happened across the network in the last academic year. We thought it would be nice to kick off this newsletter with a few of the highlights you shared on the Padlet board:

• Increasing connections with the SGO and Active Partnership networks
• Seeing more mainstream settings participate in events
• Delivering to new audiences
• Co-creating events with young people
• Developing youth leadership

Thank you for sharing this feedback and we look forward to hearing more throughout this year.

Keep in touch
Please let us know when there are events relating to inclusion programmes happening in your county (e.g. inclusive sports festivals, LTA Open court events, IYL events, etc) as we would love to come and see them in action. Please email [email protected] with your dates.

Poll for the next conference
We will be meeting as a network again at the start of the 2025-26 academic year, and we would like to know what days of the week generally work best for you to attend a national face-to-face event. Please vote on this survey to let us know.

SEND Shooting Stars

This year we are asking Lead Inclusion Schools to support two SEND Shooting Stars clubs, as well as recruit at least one new school to attend one of the three virtual training sessions throughout the year (sign up links to these are further down the page). This is to achieve our overall target of 150 clubs across the country.

To help promote the programme, Niamh-Elizabeth Mourton has developed some matrices for a one-hour and three-hour introductory session to engage practitioners in the SEND Shooting Stars programme. These plans are adaptable and involve practicals to bring the resources to life. Take a look here:

One-hour introductory session
Three-hour introductory session

ASK research QR code

Please share this website link or QR code with the partners and schools you work with so they can provide feedback to ASK Research on the Inclusion 24 programme. This information helps ASK Research produce a report on the impact of the programme, demonstrating the great work you do around the country.

Video walk through of census data

Here you will find a PDF guide and a video walk through of how to use census data to identify which schools are in your area and how to see the breakdown of the number of students receiving SEN support and the number who have EHC plans.

Swim England
This year school swimming is part of the core Lead Inclusion School offer. Following the Swim England round table session at conference, here is a reminder of the key asks for Lead Inclusion schools this year:

• Deliver “dryside” pre-swimming familiarisation, activation and water safety sessions at school. Record/evidence any successes or areas for development from these sessions taking place, including evidence of any pupils retaining key water safety messages. Resources can be found at the Swim England School Swimming and Water Safety Charter Sign Up - Swim England School Swimming and RLSS drowning prevention resources Royal Life Saving Society UK's Drowning Prevention Week (rlss.org.uk)
• Engage other local “satellite schools” to complete “dryside” water safety activities and support schools with ideas for delivery in a manner suitable for pupils’ abilities.
• Work in partnership with any external swimming lesson providers to encourage them to sign up the Swim England School Swimming and Water Safety Charter and to provide site specific pre-swimming information. Walk through videos of changing areas, showers and pools or carry out tours of facilities to allow pupils processing time to see larger pools/facilities before their first lesson.
• Schools and swimming lesson providers to complete the Swim England online school swimming and water safety assessment tool. Evidence any changes/improvements upon reviewing recommendations of the assessment tool and record any impact of the changes.

During the round table, LIS also identified some barriers to delivering school swimming, which Swim England have responded with some recommendations here.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Monthly Networking Calls

Based on the feedback from the Lead Inclusion School Networking Day in September, we are going to be trialling running two drop-in networking calls each month, the week after the newsletter is released. This will provide you with the opportunity to ask questions, connect with other Lead Inclusion Schools, and share updates and best practice. Please see the links to sign up below:

• Lead Inclusion School Networking Call, Tuesday 15 October, 12pm. Sign up here
• Lead Inclusion School Networking Call, Thursday 17 October 3.45pm. Sign up here

We hope these calls will be beneficial for you. If you have any feedback for us, please contact [email protected], we would love to hear from you!

TAs getting involved in module creation

The Inclusive PE Training Programme (IPE) has been redesigned to provide a high-quality PE curriculum for all young people by increasing knowledge and confidence to deliver inclusive PE. As part of the Inclusion 2024 project with the DfE we have been asked to include further resources to look at supporting the role of Teaching Assistants in inclusive PE. As part of the process, we are looking to pull together a working group consisting of Teaching Assistants across a variety of settings to help design the resource and capture the voice of Teaching Assistants.

We will be looking at hosting the initial working group mid-October 2024, with the aim to launch the modules in January 2025. If you would like to be involved in this, please contact Helen Derby (Strategic Lead programmes, Activity Alliance) on [email protected] or phone 07764 291662.

SEND Shooting Stars

• SEND Shooting Stars (1) - Tuesday 22 October, 2:30-4:30pm, Virtual. Please share with your networks. Sign up here
• SEND Shooting Stars (2) - Thursday 5 December, 2:30-4:30pm, Virtual. Please share with your networks. Sign up here
• SEND Shooting Stars (3) - Tuesday 11 February, 2:30-4:30pm, Virtual. Please share with your networks. Sign up here

Swim England Water Safety Training

• Swim England Water Safety (1) – Monday 4 November, 3:15-4:45pm, Virtual. Please share with your networks. Sign up here
• Swim England Water Safety (2) – Wednesday 6 November, 3:30-5pm, Virtual. Please share with your networks. Sign up here
• Swim England Water Safety (3) – Friday 8 November, 12:30-2pm, Virtual. Please share with your networks. Sign up here

Cerebral Palsy training

Cerebral Palsy Sport have a CPD called 'An Introduction to Cerebral Palsy in Sport and Physical Activity’ on the UK Coaching website. They have a limited number of codes available to access this CPD for free and are wanting to gauge how many people would like to access it. If you or another staff member at your school would like to do the training, please send an email to [email protected] to register your interest.

RESOURCES

Youth voice toolkit

The Youth Sport Trust youth voice toolkit has had a refresh! The toolkit was co-designed with young people during the 2023-24 academic year and includes a number of resources to help you engage young people in discussions. A particular highlight is the inclusive focus groups tool which provides specific guidance for practitioners on how to engage young people with SEND. Check out the toolkit here.