SENCO Clusters and Provision Mapping

SENCO Clusters are groups of SENCOs from mainstream schools across Sutton. They meet regularly throughout the academic year.

What are SENCO Clusters?

To use the experience and expertise of SENCO's in Sutton schools, the Local Area implemented ‘SENCO clusters’ in September 2020.  Below is a summary of the functions that the SENCO clusters  undertake.

SENCO Clusters fulfil the following functions: 

• Sharing best practice and expertise in meeting needs across schools. This is through case study information

• Sharing best practice across the clusters through peer reviews and Quality Assurance processes

• Developing a consistent understanding of provision in settings. This is by using consistent approaches to provision mapping

• Moderating across their schools to ensure consistency and common understanding of levels of need

• Considering any cases seen as ‘exceptional’ and give advice, support or confirm that level across the group

• Coordinating any central allocation of resources such as EP time, or therapies or contingency fund for transition and planning their use

• Coordinating and managing central funding for eg SENCO conference, training, Lead SENCO work

• Pooling monies to share/buy resources across the cluster as agreed

• Be the first stage moderation of requests for exceptional needs funding with cluster leads. Then attend a Borough-wide final decision meeting (with key officers attending).

Which schools are in which Clusters and when do they meet?

There are 6 clusters across the Borough and a programme of meetings have been agreed. Schools are organised primarily around phase (primary and secondary). Cross phase clusters meet to  help address cross phase issues such as transition.

Local Area Cluster SENCO Leads

The Local Authority has appointed 6 Lead Cluster SENCO's working across the LA and the Cluster one day each week.  Lead SENCOs are drawn from existing schools in Sutton to play a lead role in the development and facilitation of clusters.

The contact details of each of the Lead Cluster SENCO's can be found on ‘Knowledge Hub’. Knowledge Hub is a private online collaborative platform run by Sutton SENCO's for Sutton SENCO's. Visit the Knowledge Hub website [External Link].

The platform brings together an online forum. This includes, SENCO calendar and a library of resources or key information. If you are a SENCO and do not yet have access you can click on the link above, register, then find the Sutton SENCO forum group and request to join. You can also contact your Cluster Lead SENCO. If you do not know who your lead SENCO is please contact a member of the LBS education team who will be able to help you.