Assess, plan, do, review
The four-part cycle at the centre of SEN support, and what the Code actually asks of each stage.
What is the graduated approach?
A four-part cycle — assess, plan, do, review — that repeats, with each turn building a more accurate picture of what the child needs and what helps. CoP 6.44 describes it. The point of the cycle is the repetition: a single round is a starting position, and it is the second and third that show whether the provision is doing anything.
What belongs in 'assess'?
A clear analysis of the pupil's needs, drawing on what teaching staff see, the school's own assessment data, the pupil's development compared with peers, and the views and experience of the parents. Where an outside professional is already involved, their advice belongs here too. The stage is about establishing the need rather than the answer; a cycle that starts at 'plan' usually ends up reviewing whether an intervention was delivered rather than whether it was the right one.
What belongs in 'plan' and 'do'?
In plan: what will be put in place, who is responsible, what is expected to change, and when it will be reviewed — agreed with the parents and, where appropriate, the pupil. In do: the class or subject teacher remains responsible for working with the pupil day to day, even where the provision involves group work or one-to-one teaching away from the main class, and works closely with whoever delivers it.
How long should a cycle run before review?
The Code does not set a fixed period. Schools commonly run a cycle to a term, and a review date agreed with the family at the planning stage is easier to hold than one set afterwards. What matters is that the date exists and is kept: an open cycle with no review date is how a plan quietly becomes permanent without anyone deciding it should.
What must a review take into account?
The impact of the support and its quality, evaluated along with the views of the pupil and their parents — CoP 6.54. Both halves are required. A review that records only whether the provision was delivered has not answered the question the cycle exists to ask, and one that omits the family's view has left out a party the Code names explicitly.
Striova keeps a school's SEN register, its graduated-approach cycles and its costed provision in one place, and produces the paperwork in the layout a local authority asks for.
General information about the SEND system in England, not legal advice, and not advice about provision for any individual pupil. Where a page names a regulation or a paragraph of the SEND Code of Practice, read it alongside the source.