What an individual plan file contains

An individual plan is the file a school keeps so that more than one adult knows what a particular student needs during the day. The name on the cover changes from place to place. People say support plan, learning plan, pupil passport, or a phrase with the word individual in it. The name matters less than whether the pages can be used. A typical file is not a book. It has a cover with dates, a note of what the student does well, a description of what gets in the way in lessons, the adjustments adults are meant to make, one or two targets, and a day when someone will look at the file again. Extra reports may be stapled at the back. A thick file is not automatically a better one. A single page that a visiting teacher can follow before the lesson starts may do more than a long document that stays in a drawer.

The cover tells you whether the file is still in use. Look for the student's name, the class, the date the plan was written or last changed, the next review, and who is supposed to hold a copy. A plan with no review date is a notice that nobody has to revisit. A plan looked at only once a year can be too slow when the difficulty changes by term. Ask who arranges the review. It is often a coordinator rather than every subject teacher. Parents, and older students, should know that person's name. If three staff give three names, the cover has already failed, however careful the paragraphs inside it are.

A section on strengths can look soft. It has a job. A file that lists only problems teaches staff to see a bundle of difficulties, and it gives the student nothing to use. Strengths that help are specific. Enjoying a sport is thin unless that sport is part of how a skill will be practised. Remembering spoken instructions more reliably than written ones, being able to explain a method to a partner, or staying steadier when warned before a change of activity: those can shape what adults do next. If the section is empty or could describe anyone, offer lines from recent weeks that school has also seen. A strength that exists only at home can still be mentioned, labelled as home, so nobody builds a lesson on a habit the classroom has never shown.

Needs should be written as what happens in the room. "Needs support" cannot be carried out. Losing the thread when instructions are only spoken, and there are more than two steps, can. A broad phrase about reading or writing is a heading. The lines under it are the plan: a worksheet takes so long that the task never starts, spelling stops the writing, copying from the board adds mistakes that were not in the student's head. Health information belongs here only in the form staff must act on. A food to avoid, a sign that a break is needed, who to call. The full history does not have to sit in every teacher's copy. A diagnosis, where there is one, may be named. The file's work is what follows from it in class. Two students with the same diagnosis may need different adjustments. A student with no diagnosis may still need the file. The pages are not themselves a diagnosis, and they do not become one by being filed.

Adjustments are the part that has to be ordinary enough to happen on a wet Wednesday. The sort of line that belongs: a seat where the board is visible, instructions written down as well as said, a laptop for longer writing, extra time when work is timed, homework shorter in length but the same in kind, a brief check at the start of the afternoon, leaving two minutes early to miss a packed corridor, a warning before a loud drill. Each line should say who carries it out. "Access to a laptop" is vaguer than naming the department that provides one for assessed writing. If equipment is required, say where it lives. If the student is expected to ask for something, such as a short break, say what the ask looks like. A sentence that the student will speak up for themselves is a wish until the signal is agreed and recognised.

Targets should be few, and someone should be able to see them inside a few weeks. Eight targets will be ignored, because nobody can coach eight changes before the next meeting. Handing in the science work on the day, with a note on any question that stuck, can be seen. Raising a reading score by a large amount may be a hope for later. It is a weak target for one term if the weekly actions are missing. Ask what the student will do, what the adult will do, and how either of you will know. A count helps when it is honest. Bringing the book and a pen to maths on most days can be checked. Being asked to try hard cannot. Older students should help choose the target. One they do not recognise will not be practised, and the review will then record that a plan failed which they never held in their own words.

Someone has to own each action, or the file is everybody's job and therefore nobody's. Typical names are the class teacher, a coordinator, a teaching assistant where one exists, a parent, and the student. "Staff will be aware" is not an action. Awareness has no time on a calendar. Clearer lines say that the coordinator gives a new teacher the short version in the first week, that a parent initials a diary on a named day, that the student uses an agreed card instead of leaving the room without a word. If a visitor from outside school is listed, the plan should say whether they work with the student, advise the teacher, or only send a report. Those are different. A name on a page is easy to read as a promise of weekly contact. The file should state the real frequency so the family is not waiting for a meeting nobody scheduled.

Reports from outside, when they are attached, have dates and limits. A clinic letter may describe an assessment done months ago, in a quiet room, on one skill. It does not automatically describe a noisy lesson on a Thursday. Read the date. Read the recommendations. Those the school has taken up should appear as adjustments, not only as an appendix that nobody has turned into classroom language. Those it has not taken up should not be implied. Ask which lines are actually in force. A report a family waited a long time for can feel as if every sentence must be delivered. The school still has to turn it into something a teacher can do with a full class. That translation is a fair thing to discuss. It is not automatic, and discussing it is not a slight to the person who wrote the report. Keep your own copy of anything you handed in. Attachments go missing when files are tidied.

This is a description of the sort of pages often found in a school file. It is not advice about the law in any particular country. Places differ in what must be written, what must be paid for, and what a family can require. The working file described here sometimes sits beside a formal document with a legal standing, and sometimes it is the only paperwork the school uses. Anyone who needs to know enforceable rights needs a source that knows the local rules. What you can do with the copy in front of you, wherever you are, is read it for specifics and ask for vague lines to be rewritten. You can also correct facts: a wrong class, an adjustment that stopped last term, a need that is no longer true, a strength that was never accurate.

The weekday test is a busy teacher, or a supply teacher who has not met the student. Could that person read one page in a few minutes and know what to do in the next hour? If not, ask for a short version that carries the adjustments and the signal used when the student is stuck. The longer file can stay with the coordinator. The short version should be where the class teacher can see it without a search. Some older students are willing to keep a card. Some will not carry anything that sets them apart in front of friends. That preference should be written down. An adjustment that shames the student will be refused in practice, and the next review may say they would not take part, when the real problem was the form the help took.

A thin plan could belong to any child: be kind, try hard, offer help, look again next year. If that is what you were given, ask for a rewrite from one real week. One need, one adjustment, one target. Bring an instance. Copying the board wrongly so the homework made no sense is more useful than a general claim of difficulty. A plan can also promise too much: support that would need two adults in every lesson in a school that does not have them. A line that cannot happen makes the file untrue. A smaller adjustment that actually occurs is better. You can note what you asked for and what was possible. That note keeps the record honest for the next meeting, instead of everyone pretending the impossible line was delivered.

At a review, put the target next to evidence. A mark book, a homework record, a piece of writing, or a simple tally the student kept will do. A fresh paragraph of praise or worry, with no link to the target, does not. If the target was met, replace it. Keeping it forever because it feels safe hides whether anything new is happening. If it was missed, ask whether the adjustment happened. A missed target because a promised laptop was never in the room is a resources fact. A missed target because the student dropped a strategy they had agreed is a different conversation, and the student should be in it. If the review date passes in silence, a short message asking for a new date is enough. Take your copy so the meeting does not rebuild the plan from memory and drift away from what was written.

When a student changes class, year, or school, the file has to travel in words the next adult will follow. Internal abbreviations will not survive the move. Ask for a current copy at the transfer, and check that the adjustments still fit the new building. A pass for a corridor they have left is dead. A strategy that worked in a smaller class may need to be rewritten for a larger one. A student old enough to say the two adjustments they most need, without reading them off the page, is carrying the file in the only form a rushed adult can hear. That sentence is also a test that the plan was made with them. A plan made only about them tends to surprise them at the worst moment, in front of a new teacher, when a line is read aloud that they have never seen.

Who sees the file is part of whether it is usable. Not every adult on the site needs the family history or the medical detail. Teachers of the student need the adjustments. A trip leader or a club supervisor may need a narrower extract: fatigue, food, how to tell that help is required. Ask who gets the full plan and who gets a portion. You should be told if a copy goes to a service outside the school. Older students have a growing reason to know what is written about them. Reading it with them, in language they can follow, catches mistakes and catches a harsh tone. A student who finds a blunt description by accident will distrust the next version. Describe the need plainly. Leave out blame, jokes, and old incidents the next teacher does not need in order to run tomorrow's lesson.

This page is general information. It is not a policy, a diagnosis, a school place, or a trade.