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West Midlands

From the densely populated major city of Birmingham, to the rural areas of Shropshire and Herefordshire, the West Midlands is a diverse region.  Through our work so far, it is clear that there is a dedication to improve outcomes for learners with SEND across our region from families, schools, and professionals. We aim to build on existing effective practice for our population of pupils with SEND so that children experience success in their learning and parental confidence improves.

We aim to do this through Whole School SEND’s vision to grow a community – a network where knowledge, skills and solutions are shared. This will build from the successful work that already exists within our region – sharing what is working and good news stories. We will identify the gaps and seek to work with local practitioners, our partners and family groups to respond to these areas through training, resources and support.

We believe that long term relationships are important in this process of improvement for children and young people with SEND. So links with professionals such as SLEs, NLEs and advisory services, through teaching schools, consortiums, academies and Local Authorities are vital to ensure that high quality SEND provision is sustainable and embedded within our schools.

The values of Whole School SEND which are central to the community underpin all our work in the West Midlands. Sign up to access free resources and updates on training, research, opportunities to work together.

Group of 3 primary school age children enthusiastically putting their hand up sat around a classroom desk

Your Regional SEND Leads

Alison is the West Midlands Deputy Regional Lead for WSS as well as being the Headteacher of an outstanding generic secondary special school in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire. She moved into this role having spent 11 years at Keele University running the PGCE Secondary programme and lecturing on the International Diploma in Education in India and Thailand.
 

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Alison Parr

Conrad currently works within the within the school improvement team at the Mercian Trust as its Director for Social Mobility. Previous to this role, Conrad served as a senior leader, for ten years, within one of the Trust’s secondary schools where he was also SENCo and pupil premium lead. Conrad has previously been a facilitator on both the NPQML and NPQSL programmes, undertaken training to become a school and MAT SEND reviewer, is a PP systems reviewer and an SLE (SEND). Within his professional practice Conrad is also a specialist teacher (Dyslexia) 
 

Image shows Conrad Bourne, Deputy Regional SEND Lead for the West Midlands

Conrad Bourne

Local authorities in this region

  • Birmingham
  • Coventry
  • Dudley
  • Herefordshire
  • Sandwell
  • Shropshire
  • Solihull
  • Staffordshire
  • Stoke-on-Trent
  • Telford and Wrekin
  • Walsall
  • Warwickshire
  • Wolverhampton
  • Worcestershire