Early years options can include childminders, day nurseries, pre-schools, holiday playschemes, childcare in your own home and, in some areas, Portage services (see below).

Free Education & Childcare

All 3-and 4-year-olds in England are entitled to 570 hours of free early education or childcare a year. This is often taken as 15 hours each week for 38 weeks of the year.

Working families of three- and four-year-olds are entitled to an extra 15 hours of free childcare on top of the 15 hours of free early education.

Some 2-year-olds are also eligible.

Gov.UK / Find Free Early Education explains the rules about who can provide the childcare, when it starts and when it stops, and what is available in your area.

For information for childcare in:

• Scotland
• Wales
• Northern Ireland

Local Offer

All councils in England are required to publish a ‘Local Offer’. This is to provide information in one place: detailing the services and activities that families can find locally and how to access them.

The Local Offer will include information on:

• Childcare options, including expertise to support children with SEND
• Support to parents to aid children’s development at home, such as home learning programmes and Portage (see the tab Early Years Support below)
• Free early education places and any special arrangements for children with SEND
• Support to help children with SEND move smoothly from nursery or a childminder to reception class at primary school

The Local Offer should be published on your council’s website, and also be made available in a printed copy.

Portage Services

Portage home visitors provide help at home for pre-school children with learning difficulties, physical disabilities or other special needs.

To see if you have portage services in your area, visit the National Portage Association website which has details of all registered portage services and who to contact.

The Early Years Foundation Stage Framework (EYFS)

This is a set of standards that all registered childcare settings, registered childminders, and schools caring for children up to the age of five must meet, including how they should care for children with SEND.

This includes:

• Making arrangements to support children with SEND, and giving parents information about this
• Identifying a staff member with lead responsibility for SEN (Special Educational Needs Coordinator or SENCO)
• Discussing concerns about your child’s development with you and agreeing how best to support them, as well as considering if specialist input is needed
• Ongoing assessment, keeping you informed about your child’s development

Your child’s nursery, pre-school or childminder should provide a written summary of your child’s progress when they are between two and three years old. This will give details about your child’s development, their strengths, talents and likes, as well as any additional support that they might need.

At age five, a child’s review should look at literacy, mathematics, understanding the world and expressive arts and design.

You should be asked to contribute towards these reviews.

Reasonable Adjustments

No provider can refuse to take your child because of their SMA. They must make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to the way they provide a service. This is to make sure all children are able to access their activities and facilities.

"Reasonable" can be interpreted differently. There is no straightforward definition for what this includes.

our Local Authority has a duty to make sure that all settings that provide free early education receive additional funding to support children who need extra help. It also has a duty to make sure there are enough early years options for all families in the area who need it. They must help you find the right one for your family.

Some providers specialise in support for disabled children and children with special educational needs. If your child’s SMA is causing severe health and / or mobility challenges, they may be offered a place in a specialist nursery.

If your child is refused a place at an early years setting of your choice, and you believe either the provider or the Local Authority is failing in their duties, you have the right to challenge this decision. For good advice see: Contact / Refused Childcare.

Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCO)

Early years settings that receive government funding must have a SENCO. This is a teacher who is responsible for making sure all the children with SEN have the support they need.

Your child should also have a named keyworker – who has day-to-day responsibility for your child. This is the person to speak to first if you have any worries or just want to talk about how your child is doing.

Early Years SEN Support Plan

You should expect to work with the SENCO and other staff to assess what will be challenging for your child in their early years setting. You will be able to let the staff know what help your child has at home so that they can support your child in a similar way. This should all be recorded in a written plan. There should be an agreement as to when you will review the plan to check that it is working or if there need to be any changes. This would not though stop you raising any concerns you might have at any time.

If your child needs more help than the early years setting can normally provide, for example, your child may need a lot of adult support for most or all of the day, they may need an Education, Health and Care (EHC) Plan – see the tab below for more information

You child may also have an Individual Healthcare Plan – see the tab below.

All children need help and support to learn. When teachers plan their lessons, they adapt and include activities and different ways of learning. They aim for every child to progress and achieve as much as they can.

The Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCO) is the teacher responsible for assessing how much and what sort of extra support is needed by any child with SEND in their school. The SENCO then works with other teachers and liaises with parents to make sure the support is put in place and is working.

This support may be provided in a number of ways depending on your child’s needs:

• Special Educational Needs (SEN) Support Plans
• Education, Health & Care Plans (EHCPs)
• Individual Healthcare Plans (IHPs)

You will find information about these in the tabs above.

Schools must also support children with additional needs as follows:

Reasonable Adjustments

If you choose a state-funded school and your child is allocated a place, by law the school will need to make "reasonable adjustments" for your child, including to the building.

"Reasonable" can be interpreted differently. There is no straightforward definition for what this includes, and each school varies.

“It is important to ask how willing the school seem to make necessary adaptations. If they seem negative, how important is it to you that your child goes to this school? Will you continue to have battles?”

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You may want to ask the school to see any of the following reports, policies or plans (or they may be on the school’s website):

Special Educational Needs (SEN) Information Report

All schools must have one of these. It explains things such as:

• The kinds of SEN the school is able to support
• How children’s needs are identified and assessed
• What support is offered
• How the curriculum is adapted

Special Educational Needs (SEN) Policy

Every school should also have a policy which says how it supports disabled pupils to be included in school activities. Examples of what this must include are:

• The expertise and training of school staff and how other specialist expertise will be available.
• The support the school provides for improving emotional and social development and what it does to prevent bullying.
• How children with SEN are supported to access activities in the school that are available to pupils without SEN.

Accessibility Plan

This includes information about what the school is doing to make both the environment and the curriculum more accessible for disabled pupils, such as installing lifts or ramps. It may be included within the SEN Information Report (see above).

Medical Needs Policy

All state-funded schools must make arrangements to support children who have medical needs – and say what these are. For more detail see the Government guidance: Supporting pupils with medical conditions at school

Behaviour Policy

All state-maintained schools must publish this on the school’s website. It covers how the school encourages good behaviour and what happens if school rules are broken. It must also cover what the school does to prevent bullying.

Academies and Independent Schools must also have a behaviour and anti-bullying policy. There is no legal duty for them to publish it on their school’s website, though this is good practice.

Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan (PEEP)

There must be an individual PEEP in place for every pupil who has mobility difficulties. It must describe their needs and how they will be kept safe and evacuated from any building where they will be – for example, if there was a fire in school.

A Special Education Needs Support Plan sets out what outcomes a child is expected to achieve, and what support is being put in place for this. Any child who can be supported by an SEN Support Plan has a legal right to attend a mainstream nursery / school – if this is what the family wants. Most children with SEN go to mainstream school.

The Plan should be based on an individual assessment of the child by the school’s Special Education Needs Coordinator (SENCO). Parents should be fully involved in discussions. The nursery / school should:

• analyse your child’s difficulties.
• identify the extra support your child needs.
• put the support in place.
• regularly check how well it is working so that they can change the amount or kind of support if they need to.
• give you clear information about the extra help your child is getting and meet with you at least three times a year to review how your child is progressing and what the next steps will be. This should be in addition to the usual parents’ evening meetings.
• provide you with a report at least once a year on your child’s progress.

If needed, the nursery / school can ask specialist support services to carry out assessments and provide further advice and support.

Nurseries / schools may, or may not, be able to seek extra SEN funding from their local authority.

Independent schools, where parents pay fees, are not legally required to identify SEN or provide SEN support in the same way as a state-funded school.
If your child needs more support than an SEN Plan can provide, you can apply for an Education, Health and Care Plan – see the tab below.

If you or your child’s education setting think that your child will need additional support (over and above what would reasonably and normally be provided in mainstream education) in their nursery or school, you can apply for an Education, Health and Care (EHC) Needs Assessment. Find out more here.

This must be agreed between the parents / carers and the health professionals that support any child who has health needs. When a child starts school, this should also include the school nurse and / or whoever has responsibility for first aid and health.

Continuing Care (CC)

Continuing Care is a way of funding healthcare packages for babies, children and young people (from birth to 18 years old) with complex healthcare needs whose needs cannot be met by existing mainstream or specialist health services. This is free and not means tested. Some children who have SMA may already receive this support at home. There will be a review to discuss whether this support can continue at school. If it is agreed, usually, the nurses who provide this care would come from the same agency the family are already working with. This will mean that either the child’s current nurses would cover the extra hours, or others would be recruited by the same agency.

This section takes you through the process and what you might want to think about. Read more here.

In June 2023, the Department of Education issued:

Travel to school for children of compulsory school age – Statutory guidance for local authorities.

Section 13 on page 11 covers: Children who have Special educational needs, disability or mobility problems.

You can refer to this guidance when you discuss your child’s needs with your Local Authority (LA).
If your child has an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP – see tab above), although you can apply later, it is good to discuss transport at the EHCP planning meeting. You can request that your LA representative is there to support your case.

Just as for any child, starting school and settling in is a big milestone both for your child and you. We hope our pages on Getting Ready for Primary School and our pack: ‘Getting the Right Support & Education in England for your child who has SMA" will have helped make this milestone feel a bit less daunting. This section answers some of the questions we are often asked about life at school.

Read more >

Secondary schools admit children from the ages of 11 through to 16 – Key Stages 3 and 4. If the school has a Sixth form, children may stay there until they are 18 though there are other options from age 16 (see Transition & Planning Ages 13 – 18 on this page).

State secondary school applications – often made on line via the Local Authority – usually need to be made by the end of October in the year a child turns 11.

Watch "Transitioning into School Part 2 (Secondary school)" from our Living with SMA podcast, featuring Grace (mum of Sonny who lives with SMA) and our host Ross Lannon (an adult who has SMA) sharing their insights and experiences on the social, emotional, and academic aspects of transitioning to secondary school:

Recorded: June 2023

Moving from Primary to Secondary School is a big event and change for any child, but if you have a child who has SMA, the transition can be even more of a challenge as there is even more to think about. ‘Start early’ is probably the best advice. Talk to your child’s teacher and the Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator (SENCO) as they will have a good idea of what schools in the area can offer. Most schools will have open days you can attend the year before your child needs to apply for a place, so you should be able to get the answers to some key questions. If you think your child may become anxious or unsettled, you can do this initial work without them:

• Which schools are possible?
• Do any of them specialise e.g. in arts or sciences
• How would that fit with your child’s interests?
• Revisit the questions you had when you chose a primary school – see these tabs on the Getting Ready for Primary School page:
  • What to think about when you choose a school
  • What to look for when you visit schools

You will then be in a good position to look at a shortlist with your child and have time to make visits, have discussions and make your application. You should have your place confirmed by the beginning of March. This will give your child’s current and new school time to plan a smooth transition.

Activity Alliance – provide inclusive PE training and resources for educational staff and others across the UK

Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education (CSIE) – information for schools on inclusive education.

SEND Gateway – an online portal offering educational professionals free, easy access to information, resources and training for meeting the needs of children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND).