Post 1 - IEP’s
- What are they and why you should have one.
The acronym I. E. P. stands for Individual Education Plan. It is a plan that outlines the supports that a school or a team of people are going to be working through to nudge your child in the direction of success. The thing is, it isn’t always about Education. They can actually be about Behaviour , in which case, they sometimes get called an I.B.P - yup, you guessed it, an individual behaviour plan. In most cases, behaviour is linked to learning so it could have both. Schools mostly use the term IEP as an umbrella word which means - The action plan.
Other ways of referring to it are : Student support plan, individual learner plan, target student plan, collaborative action plan , safety plan, health plan, etc etc.
What plans are expected for your child, should they have a need for differentiation in class, in any class, big or small?
For instance; Mary has dyslexia, undiagnosed, but really struggles to learn spelling in the way her teacher asks her to and can’t make sense of many words on a page so really benefits from using audiobooks. So now what?
Best practice means that the school would have an overarching plan stored on file , which captures everything or anyone involved in providing supports from year 0 to year 13 - with your child’s name on it. Your child also has a National Student Number (NSN) assigned to them , much like an ID number, which is how they are identified throughout their schooling. This number is also there. This big mama of a summary is changing all the time as things change. Nowadays, it is automatically created by digital programs called Content management systems, your school probably uses something like e-tap or Kamar or something similar. Ideally, you are aware of this and have seen it. The reality is , you probably haven’t. Why not? Because of time. Few schools have anyone onboard who inputs the data or records it, few schools know that they need to be including parents in the process. I go more into this big mama of an overview in BLOG 2, but for today’s chit chat, I am keen to get to what sits within that, - the IEP’s.
Within this Big Mama are the individual moments of additional support planning , recorded , so that next year, when Mary is still struggling, they can pick up where they left off and see what has worked and what hasn’t. The MOE call it SEAMLESSNESS…… These moments are organised as an IEP, which I mentioned earlier.
What about those IEP’s ?
An IEP or an action Plan is not a stand alone thing. It is evidence of a PROCESS that has happened of which you are a part of . !!!! The MOE prescribe it. See quotes in column on the right.
This is what an IEP could look like for you:
What are IEP's and how do they differ from the IEP Process?
Have a look at our Services page to see how we can help.
Quotes from the Ministry of Education (MOE) website outlining their expectations for schools around IEP’s :
Like all curriculum design in New Zealand, the IEP process is “a continuous, cyclic process”
(The New Zealand Curriculum, page 37).The audience includes:
students;
their parents/caregivers and members of their whānau, hapū, iwi, or other communities;
school staff, including teachers, teacher aides, and school leaders;
specialists;