Learning Support for Schools
For pupils who have carried the same targets from one annual review to the next. We work out what is getting in the way, break the target into something teachable, and show your staff how to teach it.
Why a target rolls over
A plan can name the right outcome and still be impossible to deliver.
Targets are often written by people who have not met the pupil, in language that describes where a child should get to rather than how anyone would get them there. "Will develop functional communication" is a goal, not a teaching plan; it does not tell a teaching assistant what to do on Monday morning.
What usually sits underneath a stalled target is a missing skill. A pupil cannot follow a two-step instruction if following one instruction is not yet reliable. They cannot take turns if waiting a few seconds is intolerable. The named target is just too many teaching steps from where the pupil actually is.
Schools are not short of advice. Most SENCos have a drawer of reports making recommendations, with nobody accountable for whether any of it happened. What is missing is the next level of detail: what to teach, in what order, and how you will know it is working.
What a behaviour analyst brings to this
Behaviour analysts are usually called into schools in a crisis, so our work is often thought of as being about behaviours of concern. Teaching is the other half of it.
Some of the strategies will already sound familiar. Task analysis, chaining, prompting, shaping and reinforcement are used in classrooms every day, and every one of them comes from behaviour analysis. These are our methods, and we know how to get the most out of them: which to use for a particular skill, how to set them up, how to teach staff to run them, and how to withdraw support so a pupil does not become reliant on an adult beside them.
We also put the tracking in place and monitor it with staff. That is how you know whether a method is working, and it is what tells us what to change when a pupil is not progressing.
Registered and accountable. Our practitioners are registered with the UK Society for Behaviour Analysis, whose register has been accredited by the Professional Standards Authority since 2023. The PSA is a statutory body accountable to Parliament, and it oversees regulators including the HCPC and the General Medical Council.
What we do differently
Practical enough to use, and tracked so you can see whether it is working.
We assess where the pupil actually is. The skills underneath the target, what motivates them, what they can already do independently, and how they respond to the way they are currently being taught.
We break the target into teachable steps. A sequence, in the order it should be taught, with a defined point at which each step counts as learned and you move on.
We show staff how, rather than telling them. Strategies are demonstrated with the pupil, in the classroom, with the people who will be using them.
We stay involved. Looking at the data with staff, and adjusting the programme as the pupil progresses. Recommendations nobody reviews are how the drawer of reports got there.
What this covers
Learning to learn
Transitions, demand avoidance, and starting or finishing work independently. Sometimes described as executive functioning difficulties. These usually come back to the skills a pupil needs before teaching can begin: attending, imitating, following an instruction, tolerating a demand, waiting.
Communication and social skills
Requesting, responding, and communication aids that get used. Building language with approaches that have an evidence base behind them, and making sure a non-vocal pupil's system is actually used rather than sitting in a drawer. Turn taking and responding to peers are taught directly and practised in real situations.
Curriculum access
Early reading, writing, numeracy, and pupils working below national curriculum levels. Adapting how material is presented so a pupil can engage with it, using a mastery-based approach so a skill is taught to a defined criterion before anything is stacked on top of it.
Turning a plan into teaching
Whatever the plan is called, somebody has to teach what is in it.
Under the proposed SEND reforms, more pupils with additional needs will be taught in mainstream settings, and schools themselves are expected to write and deliver individual support plans. The detail is still moving, but more of the responsibility for turning a plan into teaching will sit with school staff.
This is the part we can help with, whether the plan in front of you is an EHCP, an IEP or whatever replaces them.
What a teachable target looks like
The same outcome, written two ways.
On the plan
"Will develop functional communication to express wants and needs."
Nobody can disagree with it. Nobody can teach from it either. There is no starting point, no order, and no way of telling whether this term went better than last term.
As a teaching sequence
- Reaches towards a preferred item when it is in sight
- Repeats a verbal request for the item when modelled
- Makes a verbal request for the item without prompting
- Makes a verbal request when the item is out of view
- Makes a verbal request to a less familiar adult
- Makes a verbal request for an action, such as "help"
Each step has a point at which it counts as learned. A teaching assistant knows what they are working on this week, and the annual review has something to report.
Behaviour and learning together
Learning support is often commissioned alongside a functional behaviour assessment, since behaviour and learning are rarely separable in practice.
A pupil who is not learning is often a pupil who is avoiding something, and a pupil whose behaviour is difficult is often a pupil who cannot yet do what is being asked. Where both are in play we assess both. Read about functional behaviour assessment.
Discuss a pupil
Tell us about the pupil and the targets that are not moving, and we will tell you honestly whether we can help. We respond to enquiries within two working days.