🛂 The Pupil Passport
Discover how Pupil Passports can transform classroom consistency, boost pupil voice, and support inclusive practice, on just one sheet of A4!
👋 Welcome to SEMH Education!
Every week, I share insights, strategies, and tips from my experience working with children and professionals on social, emotional, and mental health (SEMH) in education. This week, we’re exploring Pupil Passports. Arguably, the most useful A4 piece of paper in education!
In today’s post, we’ll unpick what Pupil Passports are (no, they’re not legal passports!), why they’re so impactful and why every school should be able to implement them quickly and effectively!
🧒 What is a Pupil Passport?
What if there were a simple, one-page tool that could support consistency across classrooms, give pupils a stronger sense of voice, and help staff feel more confident in meeting a child’s needs, whether they’re a seasoned teacher or a last-minute cover supervisor?
Enter: The Pupil Passport.
Often overlooked or misunderstood as something just for children with diagnosed SEND. Pupil Passports are one of the most effective and inclusive tools a school can embed. They’re short, accessible documents, ideally no more than one side of A4, that summarise a pupil’s needs, preferences, strengths, and support strategies. And they work brilliantly for all learners.
💥Why They Are SO Effective
Whether a child is on the SEN register, has a known SEMH need, or just finds transitions difficult, a pupil passport ensures every adult in school knows how best to interact with them. This kind of joined-up information sharing is crucial, not only for building relationships but for reducing the likelihood of behaviour-related incidents, missed learning, and emotional dysregulation.
Most importantly, when they’re co-created with the child (not just about them) they promote autonomy, self-awareness, and a sense of ownership over their learning.
🧑🏫Own Experience: I’ve found them to be especially powerful in the following scenarios:
Cover lessons or staff absence
Pupil transitions between schools or key stages
Secondary settings where learners see multiple teachers
Working with support staff or one-to-one TAs
Multi-agency contexts (e.g. Social Care, Youth Justice, EPs)
I’ve often heard children use their pupil passport to inform new teaching staff or other pupils. E.G. “Please can I work in a smaller group, it’s on my pupil passport.”
When a child has been placed on a managed move or off-site direction, the pupil passports are often sent to ensure the school receiving the child can accommodate their needs and/or reasonable adjustments currently in place.
They’re especially useful when working with outside agencies such as social care, SEN support teams, sports staff, etc. You can provide these pupil passports (as long as the necessary DBS checks have been completed, of course!) to these agencies so they can better understand how best to work with certain pupils.
📝 What to Include
You might be tempted to include loads of information within these pupil passports. However, they don’t need to be bigger than a single A4 piece of paper. Keep it clear, concise, and practical.
Here’s a suggested structure:
Name and Preferred Pronouns
Likes and Interests (e.g. football, Minecraft, art)
What Helps Me Learn (e.g. sitting near the front, visuals, movement breaks)
What Makes Things Harder (e.g. noise, unclear instructions, time pressure)
How to Help Me Regulate (e.g. use a calm voice, offer time out, sensory tools)
What I’m Proud Of (e.g. my handwriting, being kind to others)
My Goals or Hopes (optional but powerful for pupil voice)
You can use symbols, colours, or even emojis for younger learners or those who find written language challenging.
Change the wording of these prompts to suit your setting, the age of the child and who you are going to be sharing them with. For example, you might change “How to Help me Regulate” to “Things that help me relax”, or just a simple relaxed emoji 😌.
🧑🏫Own Experience: Keeping these brief and creating them with the children makes them more effective, in my opinion. I created these with all the children in the last two settings I’ve taught in.
Regardless of their level of need, I found that children liked creating these passports. It gave them a more “official” way to point out to other adults what their behaviour was communicating. For example, if a child was asked to stop using their fidget toy by another adult or supply staff, they’re able to say “This helps me think, it’s on my pupil passport.” This takes away some of the embarrassment of being singled out by a member of staff.
🤝 How to Co-Create Them
As I’ve mentioned previously, I believe, pupil passports are most effective when they’re not done to the child but with them. I know this can be a challenge, so here are some ways that might make it easier!
Try:
Short 1:1 conversations during tutor time, mentoring sessions, or PSHE
Templates with sentence starters or visuals to support reluctant writers
Class-wide activities that celebrate individuality and differences
For pupils with lower literacy levels or EAL needs, consider using photos or visual cues. And remember, revisit and update the passports regularly! They should be a living document, not a tick-box exercise.
🧑🏫Own Experience: There are lots of different ways to gather the information for a pupil passport. You may already know it all already if you’ve had your class for a while. However, I believe it has more value and is infinitely more meaningful if you create these WITH the pupils.
I would seriously consider the full-class approach. If you can explain why these pupil passports are so important and how they will benefit the children moving forward, they will be more likely to buy into them.
As it comes towards the end of the academic year in England, I would possibly pitch this activity as a way to make sure their next teacher knows how they work best!
🏫 Whole-School Benefits
I know we've been talking a lot about how these passports benefit the individual child, but if we zoom out a bit, we can see how this is a benefit to the entire setting!
When used consistently, Pupil Passports can:
✅ Reduce anxiety for staff and pupils
✅ Improve behaviour and engagement
✅ Support transitions and consistency across the school day
✅ Reinforce inclusive practice without labelling
✅ Provide valuable insights for meetings, reviews, and parent communications
They’re also a great starting point for staff new to the school or to a class, particularly in times of high absence, turnover, or when supply cover is needed (which is almost every day in some schools in England!)
🧑🏫Own Experience: Pupils are more confident in directing new staff to their passport. They don’t have to explain over and over again how best to meet their needs. It’s on a simple A4 piece of paper. New staff/supply staff can easily read through them before the day starts. As these are a live document, you get to update what works best for each child. The more included the children are in creating these, the more likely they are to tell you when an old strategy no longer works for them. For example, “I don’t like fidget spinners anymore, I find them boring, can I try something else?”
🤔 Final Thoughts
In an Education system full of complex documents, statutory demands, and time pressures, the Pupil Passport stands out for its simplicity and impact. It requires no diagnosis, no funding, and no tech, just a commitment to really knowing the child in front of you.
If you haven’t tried them yet, start small. Choose three learners and trial a version this half term. You might be surprised at how much difference one sheet of A4 can make!
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We use these for all our children in mainstream education and the clearest benefit I’ve found is smoothing their transition from one year group to the next. The handover can be done at the new teacher’s convenience because they can access the pupil passports in their own time, and all the information is there having been built up through the year.