- About
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SEND Code of Practice
The SEND Code of Practice explains the duties of local authorities, health bodies, schools and colleges to provide for those with special educational needs under part 3 of the Children and Families Act 2014.
Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA)
The Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) is the way that a local authority (in this case Coventry) comes together with the local Clinical Commissioning Groups to talk about the community's current and future health, care and wellbeing needs. The result of these conversations are used to make decisions in the local area.
Equality Act 2010
The Equality Act replaced all previous equality legislation such as the Race Relations Act, Disability Discrimination Act and Sex Discrimination Act into one duty.
This duty covers all nine equality strands. The strands are; age, disability, gender, gender identity, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, and sexual orientation. For schools, duties about age and marriage and civil partnership are exempt but it does extend protection in some areas.
A disabled person is defined as someone who has a physical or mental impairment, which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on their ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.
- It is unlawful for schools to treat disabled pupils less favourably for a reason relating to their disability, without justification. Schools must take reasonable steps to ensure that, if your child is disabled, your child is not placed at a substantial disadvantage to those pupils who are not disabled.
Schools are required to make reasonable adjustments to all aspects of school life, including policies, practices and procedures, so that pupils who are disabled are not placed at substantial disadvantage.
Not all pupils with disabilities have special educational needs. Many pupils with disabilities learn alongside their peers with little need for extra resources beyond the aids which are part of their daily lives, such as a wheelchair, a hearing aid or equipment to aid vision.
The single public sector equality duty requires public authorities to:
- Eliminate discrimination, harassment and victimisation
- Advance equality of opportunity
- Foster good relations
The schools provision of the Equality Act 2010 prohibits schools from discriminating against, harassing or victimising:
- prospective pupils
- pupils at the school, and
- in some limited circumstances, former pupils.
Schools also have obligations under the Equality Act 2010 as employers/bodies which carry out public functions and service providers. This guidance is concerned with their obligations to pupils (and prospective pupils). The Equality Act 2010 provides a modern, single legal framework, and a clearer, more streamlined law that will be more effective at tackling disadvantage and discrimination.
The main provisions in the Act are:
- disability discrimination provisions:
- direct disability discrimination
- indirect disability discrimination
- discrimination arising from disability
- positive action provisions
- allows schools to target provision designed to alleviate disadvantages experienced by those with protected characteristics
- auxiliary aids and services
- the reasonable adjustment duty is extended to require schools to provide auxiliary aids and services to disabled pupils.
An aid is a piece of equipment which helps the disabled person, such as a special chair, adapted text or special computer software. A service is something that people provide such as personal assistance.
View the Council's Equality Strategy.
Privacy notices
There are two Privacy Notices used for SEND in Coventry. These explain how your personal information is going to be used, what for, who it might be shared with and why. Coventry City Council Complies with the Data Protection Act 2018 and is registered with the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) as a Data Controller.
