SENCO Meetings in Northern Ireland: How to Prepare and What to Push For

Most parents walk into a meeting with the school's SEN coordinator feeling underprepared and outnumbered. The school has the files, the professional language, and the institutional authority. You have a worried feeling that your child needs more than they are getting, and no clear way to prove it.

That dynamic is not inevitable. Understanding how the SENCo role works in Northern Ireland — and what the meeting is actually supposed to accomplish — changes the entire interaction.

The Role Has Changed: SENCo Is Now Called LSC

Northern Ireland's SEN system is in the middle of a transition. Under the older 1998 Code of Practice, every school was required to appoint a Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCo). Under the new framework introduced ahead of full implementation of the SEND Act (Northern Ireland) 2016, that role has been formally renamed the Learning Support Coordinator (LSC).

Both titles refer to the same function: the member of staff responsible for coordinating all SEN provision at the school level, maintaining SEN records, liaising with parents, and managing referrals to the Education Authority when a child's needs exceed what the school can address from its own budget. If your school still uses "SENCo," that is the same person.

The LSC sits at the centre of the Stage 1 SEN process. They are responsible for writing and reviewing your child's Personal Learning Plan (PLP), coordinating any external advisory input from EA services, and making the judgment about whether to request a Statutory Assessment from the Education Authority. The quality of their record-keeping — and their willingness to document honestly what the school cannot deliver — directly determines how strong your child's case will be if you later need to pursue a Statement.

What a SENCo/LSC Meeting Is Supposed to Accomplish

Meetings with the LSC typically happen twice a year as part of the PLP review cycle, or more frequently if there is a specific concern. The formal purpose is to review the child's progress against the targets set in the current PLP, update those targets, and agree on what provision will be in place during the next period.

In practice, these meetings are where parents hear reassurances that often do not match what they observe at home. "We're seeing some improvement." "Give the intervention more time." "We'll keep monitoring."

This is the gap you need to close. A SENCo meeting is not a welfare check — it is a statutory process. Every decision made at that meeting, and every piece of evidence presented, feeds into the child's documented SEN record. If that record later needs to support a request for Statutory Assessment, what was (and was not) said at LSC meetings will matter.

How to Prepare Before the Meeting

The most effective thing you can do before any SENCo or LSC meeting is to submit a written parent statement in advance. This does not need to be long — it should be a one to two page document that covers:

• Your child's current strengths and the areas where they are struggling
• Specific observations from home: reading difficulties, task avoidance, emotional dysregulation, sleep problems linked to school anxiety
• A summary of how long the current interventions have been in place and whether you have seen progress
• Any concerns that have not previously been formally logged

Send this by email before the meeting. This ensures that your concerns are formally entered into the meeting record rather than existing only as a verbal contribution that may not be minuted accurately. It also signals that you approach the process as an informed participant, not a passive recipient.

Request a copy of the current PLP before the meeting if you do not have one. Under the new framework, PLPs are standardized digital documents reviewed at least twice per year. Your child's PLP should contain specific, time-bound targets — not vague aspirations. If the targets say things like "will improve in literacy" without specifying what measurable improvement looks like and by when, that is a problem worth raising.

What Questions to Ask at the Meeting

Preparation determines whether you walk away with useful information or a set of professional-sounding non-answers. These questions force specificity:

About the PLP targets:

• "Can you show me the standardized test data that was used to set these targets?"
• "What specific percentage improvement in reading age is this target aiming for, and over what timeframe?"
• "If this target is not met by the next review, what happens next?"

About the interventions:

• "Which EA advisory service delivered this input? How many sessions were there?"
• "Is this intervention delivered 1:1 or in a group? How large is the group?"
• "Do you have evidence that this intervention is effective for children with my child's specific profile?"

About external referrals:

• "Has the school made any referrals to EA specialist services for my child?"
• "Has an EA educational psychologist observed my child? If not, can you request that?"

About the threshold for Statutory Assessment:

• "At what point would the school consider requesting a Statutory Assessment from the Education Authority?"
• "What evidence would you need to see before making that request?"

The last two questions are important because they force the LSC to articulate the criteria for escalation. If they say "we're not there yet," ask them to specify in the minutes what progress would need to be made — or what further failure to progress would need to be documented — before a referral would be considered.

For the complete set of meeting preparation templates, evidence-gathering checklists, and the letter requesting a Statutory Assessment referral from the LSC, see the Northern Ireland SEN Appeals Playbook.

What to Do After the Meeting

Always follow up a SENCo or LSC meeting with an email summarizing what was discussed and what was agreed. Do this on the same day or the day after. Keep it factual and non-combative: "Following our meeting today, I understood that the school will [X], and that the next PLP review will take place by [Y]."

This serves two purposes. It creates a dated written record of agreements that the school cannot later deny or contradict. And it draws the LSC's attention to any inaccuracies in your summary, which they are then obliged to correct — also in writing.

If the meeting's minutes are later distributed by the school, compare them carefully against your email summary. Discrepancies are worth flagging formally.

When the LSC Meeting Is No Longer Enough

If you have attended LSC meetings repeatedly, submitted parent statements, and have a documented trail showing that your child has not made adequate progress despite sustained, logged interventions — and the school is still not requesting a Statutory Assessment — you do not have to wait for the school's judgment.

Parents in Northern Ireland have the right to request a Statutory Assessment directly from the Education Authority, without going through the school. The EA must decide within six weeks whether to assess. If they refuse, you can appeal to SENDIST NI within two months.

The evidence gathered through PLP reviews and LSC meetings — the standardized test scores, the intervention records, the documented gap between provision and need — is exactly the foundation your Statutory Assessment request requires. Good meeting practice is not just about the meeting itself. It is about building the case that forces the system to act.

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