The Portsmouth Education Partnership promotes inclusion with the aim of removing barriers to achievement for all Portsmouth children and young people. We’ve worked closely with young people, parents, carers and professionals in Portsmouth to agree what inclusion means to people in our city.

We strive to enable children and young people to lead healthy lives and achieve wellbeing; to benefit from education or training, with support, if necessary, to ensure that they can make progress in their learning; to build and maintain positive social and family relationships; to develop emotional resilience and make successful transitions to employment, higher education and independent living.

In order to improve outcomes, we aim to ensure that there are in place a continuum of high quality support services that contribute to removing the barriers to achievement for all Portsmouth children and young people, in particular those with special educational needs and disabilities. It is our ambition in Portsmouth that children and young people’s needs will be identified early so that a high quality and co-ordinated offer of support can be put in place that meets the child’s needs and enables them to achieve positive outcomes as they prepare for adulthood.

Portsmouth is a “needs led” city: any provision or support should be provided in line with the needs of the child or young person and is not dependant on any formal diagnosis.