News

This year’s Bett Show is taking place in January at the ExCeL in London. With 850 leading companies attending, Bett – the first industry show of the year in the education technology landscape – promises to showcase 103 exciting new edtech start-ups and bring together over 34,700 attendees from the global education community.

They come together to celebrate, find inspiration and discuss the future of education, as well as the role technology and innovation plays in enabling all educators and learners to thrive.

Here, we take a look at just a handful of the exciting products and services on show at Bett, to help you decide how to plan your day.

More than 30,960 boccia balls have been thrown and 200 seated volleyball games taken place in a bid to get primary school children across the UK thinking about how they can be more inclusive at school.

There are around 770,000 children in the UK living with disabilities - equal to around one in 20 children. National children’s charity the Youth Sport Trust and Allianz Insurance are celebrating a successful partnership which brought together 2,580 young people with and without Special Education Needs and Disability (SEND).

Since June 2017, a national series of 20 mixed-ability, inclusive, multi-sport festivals have been held in the UK to build on the legacy of the Paralympics and ensure all children have access to sport and physical activity.

SoapBox Labs, the leading company in kid’s speech recognition technology, announces its cloud-based API, which accurately recognizes children’s voices and easily integrates with smart devices and applications for kids. Device manufacturers and application developers can now voice-enable children’s products easily and effectively, by taking advantage of the new Soapbox API technology. Soapbox Labs is quickly solving one of the most frustrating issues in the technology space, by recognizing and responding to children’s unique vocal and behavioral characteristics. Soapbox provides a high performance voice-interface for kids everywhere, on all devices and environments.

Carole Edmond, managing director of the Regard Group - the UK’s fourth biggest private provider of supported living and specialist residential services for people with learning disabilities, mental health needs and acquired brain injury - has been included in the 2017 list of ‘100 Women To Watch,’ Cranfield School of Management’s annual showcase for top female achievers in the UK.

Family carers, health and social care professionals, academics, education and social care providers joined together on Friday 24th November for the first national conference with an exclusive focus on Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities (PMLD) Service Standards.

Taking place in Manchester, Raising the Bar saw the launch of the new Core and Essential Service Standards for supporting people with profound and multiple learning disabilities, setting out aspirational benchmarks for what best practice care looks like across the UK and beyond. The conference also aimed to establish better networking around PMLD, which until now has been a largely neglected area in the sector and society more widely. 

Children in Need’s official mascot Pudsey Bear pays a visit to our students at Autism East Midlands Sutherland House School, Nottingham (A Specialist Autism School) 

Children in Need’s official mascot Pudsey Bear paid a visit to our students at Autism East Midlands Sutherland House School, Nottingham. Pudsey Bear joined in the school’s morning assembly today to the excited calls of students. Pudsey amazingly appeared as Mick the Mike encouraged all the children to shout out Pudseys name in a rhythmic chant. After a minute of shouts of PUDSEY miraculously he appeared! Through the assembly Pudsey danced, waved and listened to presentation by classes. Pudsey Bear also hugged and shook hands with nearly every child.

Action4Youth, an energetic youth charity that provides positive, often transformational experiences and activities, works to enable young people of all abilities and disabilities to learn to challenge themselves - learning what they can achieve rather than what they can’t.

Confidence, self-belief and people skills are not traits that come naturally to young people with learning disabilities and Special Educational Needs (SEN), so it’s easy to see how they can become self-conscious, isolated and afraid to try new things. One youth charity is working with SEN students, taking them out of their comfort zone and opening their eyes to the possibilities and opportunities that life has to offer.

A CHARITY for young people with learning disabilities has invested in new quality assurance technology to meet critical development planning and Ofsted requirements.

The Highgate-based Harington Scheme delivers individual learning programmes, including gardening courses, which are designed to help young people into employment, further education or lead a richer life.

The charity’s management team, under the supervision of scheme manager Joanna Baxter, adopted new Mesma self-assessment and improvement planning software to assist in the administration, implementation and tracking of its development plan as part of the training provider’s wider commitment to improving quality assurance.

Adoption UK and PAC-UK have published two complementary education guides, for adoptive parents and school staff, to help ensure adopted children get the best possible educational start in life.

The guides explain why these vulnerable children may need additional support in school, what educational entitlements they can attract and what support is available for them.

Adoption UK’s guide Meeting the needs of adopted and permanently placed children - A guide for adoptive parents includes information about Virtual School Heads (VSHs), Designated Teachers (DTs), Priority School Admission and Pupil Premium Plus (PP+).