The Importance of Reasonable Adjustments at school

Why Schools make reasonable adjustments

This short film on reasonable adjustments at school is for school professionals and looks at why children need our help to down-regulate in order to feel more in control and happier in school ready to learn. We need to teach them a sense of agency and give them tools such as a worry box, or a safe space to pause, in order to help them to want to be in school and feel safe and calm whilst there.

All schools strive to be able to provide high quality provision that meets the needs of all children and young people, including those with special educational needs or disabilities.

Some children will need educational provisions in addition to the high-quality teaching that is differentiated and personalised to meet the needs of the individual. This is known as special educational provision under Section 21 of the Children and Families Act 2014.

Alis Rocca talking about Reasonable Adjustments

As a head teacher, as a Senco, as anyone working with children in school, we need to get behind the behaviours that we’re seeing, and we need to think about the ‘why’.

It’s recognising that a child who’s struggling to get into schools is likely to be in a heightened state, they’re likely to be in fight-or-flight mode, so we need to be thinking: ‘How do we manage that?’

What can we do to help them downregulate to help them come into that rest & digest state of the central nervous state, so they feel more in control. They feel that they’ve got something in school that they can do to make themselves feel better.

That might be that they can learn how to do that themselves through breathing, or it might be that they know who to ask:

‘I need to feel better.

I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ve got my heart pounding,

or I feel sick in my stomach,

or my head’s hurting.’

All of those are signs that a child is in fight-or-flight, and we need to think: Okay, what can we do to teach them to know how to come out of that state?

Sense of Agency

So it’s learning that sense of agency.

As soon as a child has that sense of agency, that sense of: ‘I can make a difference here, I don’t know how to but I know I can ask that adult.‘

Or ‘I do know how to, I just grab my worry box‘

Then they’re more likely to come back into school.

Read more about Understanding Reasonable Adjustments at School

You might want to watch Sian Williams advice on School Phobia, or EBSA