Jayne Standing MA

In her professional life Jayne has extensive experience working with children who have additional needs such as learning disabilities, special educational needs, mental health conditions and those who struggle to access school due to environmental restraints and family problems.

Over the past 15 years her work in the primary school sector has progressed from being a mainstream classroom assistant, a teaching assistant working with vulnerable children, to specialising in working with and teaching children with a full range of additional needs whether it be special educational needs, learning difficulties, mental health needs, social and emotional needs and those that exhibit challenging behaviour.

In 2015 JayneI became the headteacher of a pupil referral unit where she worked alongside the local council to provide educational placements for primary aged children who had been excluded from school.

There were many facets to the role including managing and leading a team of teachers and teaching assistants and personally providing training for them in areas of special needs and academic and behaviour progress tracking , working with pupils and parents, leading on safeguarding and attendance, liaising with, and supporting headteachers of mainstream primary and secondary settings.

As well as working alongside the local authority and local services such as the police, health, and social care professionals to provide the best support for children who were struggling to access mainstream school, either by identifying previously undiagnosed special needs conditions, writing educational health care plan applications, and making referrals or by arranging any social or health care support needed by the families.

As the referral unit was a school, Jayne also had the responsibility of providing the national curriculum, writing yearly and termly planning overviews, providing assessment material, tracking progress, providing the outcomes to the child’s feeder school. At the beginning of her tenure the Ofsted rating was ‘requires Improvement’ and at the end the school was rated ‘Good’.

Jayne's current role is as the CEO of an educational consultancy company called Breakthrough Education based in Suffolk. She is the lead consultant and trainer providing a service to school staff who need assistance and training in managing children with social, emotional and behaviour issues, areas of pastoral care and special educational needs. She provides individual training sessions and whole school programmes.