What does the statement look like?

What does the statement look like?

The statement is divided into six parts:

Part 1 includes your child’s personal details and lists the advice from parents and professionals which comes with the statement.

Part 2 describes your child’s special educational needs identified by the assessment.

Part 3 describes

  • the objectives or aims of the extra help
  • the help which should match each of the needs listed in Part 2, including facilities, therapy and equipment, staffing, curriculum, any special arrangements
  • the way the help will be checked to make sure your child’s progress is meeting the objectives

Part 4 names the school or type of school your child will attend, or any help provided for your child if you are planning to educate them at home. Part 4 will be blank in the proposed statement to give you the chance to say which school you would like them to attend.

Part 5 describes any non-educational needs of your child including medical needs, specialist travel, care needs and health and safety.

Part 6 describes the help to meet the non-educational needs.

Appendices (the documents attached to the back of the statement)
These include all the advice reports made about your child during the statutory assessment and may include other information which the local authority took into account when making the statement. You are entitled to copies of all these.

Statement Template

Following several requests from members of the talk about Autism forum, we have created a Statement Template, which is designed to give parents of children with autism an idea of what they can expect to see on a typical statement.  It is illustrated with examples drawn from statements kindly provided by parents of children with autism.  We are grateful to these parents (and children) for sharing their experiences with others.

It also draws on the guidelines contained in section 7 of the SEN Toolkit.  The toolkit contains practical advice, mainly for schools and local authorities, on how to implement the SEN Code of Practice.

We welcome comments on how useful you have found this document.  If you have any further examples or advice to add, please email Jenny Phillips jphillips@treehouse.org.uk.

Download the Statement Template (PDF 69KB)