Earlier SEND Intervention: Could Bringing Psychometric Testing Skills In-House Be Part of the Solution?

By Dr Siobhan Mellor, Educational Psychologist and Director of Pedagogy and Learning, Real Training

The Schools White Paper provides a clear directive for earlier identification and support for pupils with SEND, without waiting for a formal diagnosis. In order to achieve this, developing in-house assessment skills within schools is vital.

Psychometric tests (whether attainment/ability-based or exploring SEMH needs) offer important data that contributes to a holistic picture of a child’s needs. The right tests, conducted in the right way, can reveal things about a child’s weaknesses and strengths that observations or curriculum assessment alone cannot. Yet, exam access arrangements aside, many schools, especially primary settings, still choose to outsource testing to external professionals, such as Educational Psychologists (EPs).

This is an issue because, as anyone who works in a school knows, waiting to secure EP time can be the bottleneck that delays early implementation of support. Meanwhile, the strategies that the school attempts to put in place may not always be the most appropriate.

While some SEND diagnoses, quite rightly, require a specialist literacy assessor or EP, a significant portion of the work required to determine needs can be done in-house by SENCOs, teachers and even specialist TAs.

It all comes down to getting the right training in psychometric assessment in place.

 

A national shortage of EPs

It’s no secret that a national shortage of educational psychologists threatens the success of the SEND reforms. The £1.8bn Expert at Hand grant for LAs is a positive step forward – but the question is whether the professional workforce can be expanded fast enough to deliver it?

Recent research commissioned by the British Psychological Society reveals record provision gaps, with estimates showing a ratio of one EP for every 480 pupils in the best-covered LA, to one EP for over 9,400 in the least-covered.

As an EP, I find this concerning. Even taking into account the plans to redirect EP time away from bureaucratic statutory duties and the existing funding to train 200 EPs per year, capacity will simply not meet demand from schools to deliver the reforms as intended.

Dealing with this challenge requires out-of-the-box thinking. If more school professionals were trained to confidently carry out standardised psychometric testing independently, we could drastically reduce the wait time for intervention and focus EP time towards pupils with the most complex needs.

 

How in-house psychometric testing can support targeted early intervention

Consider a hypothetical Year 4 student, Nia, whose teacher notices that she is falling behind her peers when it comes to reading. Rather than waiting months for an external expert, an assistant SENCO with a Certificate of Competence in Educational Testing (CCET) qualification can step in immediately.

They administer the CTOPP-2 to measure Nia’s phonological processing. The assessment reveals her phonological awareness is average, but her processing speed, as measured by the rapid symbolic naming sub tests, is below average. To gain a more complete view, they follow up with the WIAT-III-UK-T.

The results pinpoint the key area of need: Nia’s untimed reading accuracy and comprehension is perfectly fine, but her oral reading fluency is low. Her primary challenge is reading efficiency linked to low processing speed; it is not an accuracy issue rooted in poor phonological awareness.

Equipped with this data, her teacher and SENCO quickly devise a plan to implement targeted interventions to support processing speed difficulties, as well as offering extra time for classroom tasks, and pairing her with a reading buddy.

Nia may still struggle to make progress and require a referral to an EP or dyslexia assessor. Yet equally her progress might improve and this may not be needed. And should an Expert at Hand be required, they now won’t be starting from scratch but will inherit a solid foundation of test data, saving valuable time.

 

Precision support – not guesswork

The other issue with relying solely on external professionals for psychometric testing is that often schools do try to jump in and provide some kind of support for pupils while they are waiting for external assessor availability. Unfortunately, this means acting without a complete picture of the child’s needs.

Early intervention is only useful if it is the right intervention. Having robust psychometric data to hand takes some of the educated guesswork out of the equation. Providing a cognitive profile of the student’s strengths and weaknesses, alongside teacher observations and parent and pupil voice, allows SENCOs and teachers to tailor strategies to their exact needs.

With the right tests, it’s possible to get to the bottom of questions like;

• Is the pupil falling behind in maths because of an underlying working memory deficit, making multi-step sums feel overwhelming, or do they have a numeracy difficulty?
• Is the pupil unable to finish their work because they didn’t understand the more complex language within the question or because they are struggling with slow processing speed?
• Is the pupil being disruptive during English lessons because they have attention difficulties, or a reading or language processing difficulty?

Test data not only helps us make more informed decisions about addressing areas of weakness, but it can also reveal areas where a pupil may excel. We often forget that playing to a pupil’s strengths can be an important lever when it comes to personalising interventions.

 

Robust training a necessity

While these assessment tools are powerful, they must be handled with care. Frankly, doing no testing at all is better than doing it badly.

Psychometric tests are underpinned by complex principles such as basals, ceilings, reliability, validity, confidence intervals and standardised scores.

Without specific training, it is impossible to accurately interpret how a pupil’s scores compare to typically developing populations, why a test might yield different results over time and whether this is significant, how reliable certain tests are, or how to navigate the cultural and language limitations of a specific test.

 

CCET: the path to confidence

The CCET qualification empowers SENCOs, teachers, and experienced TAs to select, administer, and interpret psychometric tests confidently, accurately and ethically. It follows exactly the same content that we receive as EPs in our initial training, making it a fantastic opportunity to make the assessment competencies in educational psychology accessible to school staff.

Crucially, it also enables educational professionals to gain the confidence to explain a pattern of results to parents clearly, accurately and compassionately, helping them to understand why a specific intervention plan is being put in place.

CCET is open to anyone working in a school setting. For some schools, there may be potential here to alleviate workload for SENCOs by building a qualified assessment team around them. Ask yourself whether an Assistant SENCO, specialist TA, particular teacher or Head of Phase might benefit, especially as we move towards a model of pooled SEND resources.

A missed opportunity…

Whilst schools have the best intentions, being unclear on the specific needs of an individual can lead to interventions being selected that were never truly targeted.

When early intervention is delayed (or ineffective), we run the risk of a negative impact on pupil self-esteem and academic progress, as well as lost time, resources and parental confidence.

When we bring psychometric assessment in-house, however, it shifts the focus from label-first to needs-first approach and enables the following;

• Earlier and more targeted intervention becomes possible.
• Teachers and SENCOs feel a greater sense of agency and ownership of SEND assessment and interventions.
• When Experts at Hand are required, they can focus their time on more complex assessment, or on the pupils that might need expert-led, as well as school-based intervention.
• Collaboration between school staff and external professionals improves.

Getting early intervention right and making the best use of Expert at Hand time are two pivotal factors that will influence whether schools can successfully support more children with SEND in the mainstream across every age and phase.

At the moment, however, the system is facing significant capacity issues that may pose a challenge to this.

It is my firm belief that having more school professionals trained in psychometric testing and assessment skills is a key part of the solution.