What a school inclusion coordinator needs from a family, and what to ask for in return

In a CBSE or ICSE school the coordinator is often the school's special educator, sometimes also the counsellor, and sometimes a senior teacher who has taken it on. In IB and IGCSE schools the role is usually a named post with a small team and a resource room. Ask the school office who holds it. If nobody can tell you, that is your first piece of information about the school's inclusion policy.

The coordinator sits between the class teacher, the family, the shadow teacher if there is one, and the child's clinicians. They see the whole picture, and they are usually stretched across thirty of them.

The most recent reports from the child's clinicians: the developmental paediatrician, the child psychologist, the speech-language pathologist, the occupational therapist. If the child has an assessment for a learning disability from a hospital or a psychologist, a copy. Any previous IEP from another school. A one-page summary in plain language of what helps your child and what makes things worse, written by you or by the special educator at home.

Bring copies, not originals, and bring them before the meeting rather than to it. A coordinator who has read the file arrives with a plan; one who is reading it across the table arrives with questions.

The coordinator will ask for written consent to speak to your child's therapists and to share the school's observations with them. Give it. The children who do best are the ones whose school, home and clinic are all working to the same plan, and consent is what makes that possible.

Be honest about what happens at home. A coordinator who hears that mornings are calm and then finds the child arriving in distress every day cannot help. Say what the hardest hour is, what the family has tried, and what the rest of the household thinks, because the coordinator has heard all of it before.

A written IEP or support plan, with named targets, reviewed at least once a term. A named person the shadow teacher reports to on a school day. Clarity on what happens during unit tests and exams: extra time, a separate room, a reader or a scribe, according to what the school and the board allow. Notice of school events, trips and timetable changes early enough to prepare the child. And a copy of the school's inclusion policy, so that you know what it has committed to.

Ask how the school will tell you when something goes wrong, and how you should tell the school. A WhatsApp message to the class teacher at nine at night is not a system. A weekly note between the shadow teacher and the coordinator is.

Settle it before the first day. Does the shadow teacher sit in the classroom or in the resource room? May they attend the IEP meeting? Do they follow the class teacher's instruction or the coordinator's? What do they do during assembly, sport, lunch and the bus? Special Minds coordinates these with the school before placement, and writes them into the placement terms, because a shadow teacher who arrives without them spends the first month negotiating instead of supporting.

Coordinators change, schools reorganise, and some schools accept a child on paper without the capacity to support them. The signs are missed reviews, targets that do not change, and a coordinator who cannot be reached. Ask for a meeting with the coordinator and the principal together, bring the file, and ask plainly what the school can and cannot provide. A clear no is more useful than a vague yes, because it lets the family plan.