Umar Naeem

My role as the head of inclusion at The International School of Creative Science requires me to oversee Inclusion in the Early Years Foundation Stage, Primary and Secondary. The three main categories of students I am directly responsible for removing barriers are: Students who have special education needs and/or disabilities; gifted and talented students and students who have English as an additional language. Furthermore, my department is also responsible for the happiness and wellbeing of the students and staff. The school population, which is almost a thousand students, is extremely diverse and grew by roughly thirty five percent the academic year I joined. The school is relatively new, three years since its inception, and thus had its first official inspection by Dubai School Inspection Bureau this year.

One of my key achievements in the school has been securing the rating of ‘Very Good’ for Care and Support, at the School’s first inspection. I achieved this challenging task by ensuring once I began employment I conducted a thorough review and audit, with my main focus being on looking for gaps in the School. I overhauled many of the systems that were in place and created a detailed action plan along with various policies and procedures that were in line with The School Inspection Framework Handbook and the Dubai Inclusive Education Policy Framework. I architected various layers of monitoring to ensure the policies were being followed by all members of staff and I regularly delivered professional development sessions and coaching sessions to various stakeholder such as staff, parents and governors to enhance their knowledge and to also raise the profile of inclusion.

Another major achievement of mine has been creating a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with a third party agency. The agency, which is an established centre, has therapists and other professionals who, due to the MOU provide: therapy sessions onsite for students; professional development for staff and conduct workshops for parents.

My role as the head of inclusion at The International School of Creative Science requires me to oversee Inclusion in the Early Years Foundation Stage, Primary and Secondary. The three main categories of students I am directly responsible for removing barriers are: Students who have special education needs and/or disabilities; gifted and talented students and students who have English as an additional language. Furthermore, my department is also responsible for the happiness and wellbeing of the students and staff. The school population, which is almost a thousand students, is extremely diverse and grew by roughly thirty five percent the academic year I joined. The school is relatively new, three years since its inception, and thus had its first official inspection by Dubai School Inspection Bureau this year.

One of my key achievements in the school has been securing the rating of ‘Very Good’ for Care and Support, at the School’s first inspection. I achieved this challenging task by ensuring once I began employment I conducted a thorough review and audit, with my main focus being on looking for gaps in the School. I overhauled many of the systems that were in place and created a detailed action plan along with various policies and procedures that were in line with The School Inspection Framework Handbook and the Dubai Inclusive Education Policy Framework. I architected various layers of monitoring to ensure the policies were being followed by all members of staff and I regularly delivered professional development sessions and coaching sessions to various stakeholder such as staff, parents and governors to enhance their knowledge and to also raise the profile of inclusion.

Another major achievement of mine has been creating a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with a third party agency. The agency, which is an established centre, has therapists and other professionals who, due to the MOU provide: therapy sessions onsite for students; professional development for staff and conduct workshops for parents.

• While working for the School of Research Science I initially was a special needs teacher but I was quickly promoted to SENCO. As a SENCO my main responsibility has been to take a strategic overview of all forms of support designed to ensure pupils with special education needs and/or disabilities achieve success.

• Furthermore, I ensure that class teachers and learning support assistants have the tools to provide a high quality provision by advising and guiding them with practical support.

• My role also requires me to support parents who have SEN children by conducting workshops, providing information on and collaborating with external agencies and sourcing learning support assistants.

• Part of my responsibilities are to deliver outstanding lessons and one to one sessions for students who have significant needs.

• Calthorpe Academy, which was rated by Ofsted as an outstanding school for eighteen years, has provided me with the invaluable opportunity to develop and hone my skills as a teacher. The class I taught had many special needs students and students who have English as an additional language. In order to overcome these various barriers to learning, I both utilised and developed methods to help students understand the concepts that were taught. Additionally, this class enabled me to gain experience in relation to teaching English to students who find it difficult to learn.

• I was responsible for the assessment of pupils and the planning of their lessons. Additionally, against the national benchmark, I set appropriate targets for pupils, which were reviewed every term. Moreover, I used various forms of assessment to ensure students reached their targets. I was required to teach consistently effective lessons in various subjects, which included the core subjects: English, mathematics and science.

• This role required that I have a high standard of education with an extremely good knowledge of mathematics, English and IT. Duties included working on outreach with students and delivering lessons. This role also required that I worked in detail regarding reports. Additionally, I would have to lesson plan to ensure I used the allocated time effectively and I would do this by ensuring that I considered different learning styles, differentiated lessons according to abilities and actively engaged students in the lesson.

• I would provide additional help to less able pupils who were making slow progress by offering them after school support. This gave me the opportunity to work with certain students closely where I was able to give them constructive feedback on their work and ensure they understood the learning objectives. Furthermore I would set SMART targets for my pupils to help them achieve their goals and maximise learning to the fullest.