Education - National Award for SEN Coordination PGCert

Overview

The PGCert Education: National Award for Special Educational Needs (SEN) Co-ordination is a mandatory qualification for all newly appointed SENCos. It must be completed within three years of your SENCo appointment.

The government is committed to improving outcomes for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEN/D).

SENCos play a central role in schools to ensure that:

• effective provision is made for children with special educational needs and disability (SEN/D)
• and that the needs of individual learners are met.

Our course is delivered jointly with the Oxfordshire School Inclusion Team (OXSIT),who support the development of best practice in schools and provide portfolio guidance.

Our course tutors have professional experience of senior leadership and the SENCO role in a variety of schools. We also work in close partnership with hundreds of schools and colleges and other organisations, some of which also contribute to the course, e.g. Oxfordshire SEN team, Mulberry Bush Outreach Team, Oxfordshire
Hospital School.

Assessment

Module assessments will include online summaries of discussions, essays, presentations and a small-scale practitioner enquiry.

In addition to module assessments you must present a portfolio of evidence for assessment. In your portfolio you need to demonstrate that you have met all the 49 learning outcomes specified by the National College for Teaching and Leadership.

Career prospects

Many of our SENCOs who complete the course go on to further career progression, for example as:

• director of inclusion across a federation of schools
• inclusion consultant with OXIST
• deputy and assistant head roles with responsibility for inclusion.

All applicants must have one of the following: Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) Qualified Teacher Learning Status (QTLS) Early Years Teacher Status (EYTS). Please note that Students with (EYTS) will gain NASENCO applicable only to Early Years settings. The National Award for Special Educational Needs (SEN) Coordination is a mandatory course for new SENCOs and the award must be achieved within 3 years of being appointed. All school staff in the role of SENCo will have completed the NQT induction period in full before applying (SEND Regs 2014). An additional entry requirement is that the support of the Head Teacher (or equivalent) is required in order to support the school-based studies associated with this qualification and ensure that students are released to attend university teaching sessions. Please contact the Programme Administrator at to make an enquiry about the course.