Many schools and colleges are doing wonderful work around SEND. Their work is excellent and pupils and families are well-served. But many say they face challenges.
At Whole Education, we have self-evaluation data from 850 schools that form part of our SEND leadership network – around 3.5 per cent of all schools in England.
As government puts the final touches to its SEND reforms, self-evaluation analysis from 850 schools provides vital insights into where leaders say they excel, and where key challenges remain.
Let’s start with the positives.
Successes outside the classroom
The highest self-evaluation score from school leaders was for the way their school supports all learners to be “fully involved in the life of the school”. Whether through representation on the school council, attendance to residential trips or a bespoke enrichment offer – schools consistently pride themselves on their wider offer for pupils.
A leadership responsibility
School leaders take pride in owning SEND leadership ‘at a senior level’. This typically means the SENCO sits on SLT, and reflects that SEND has a ‘high profile’ in their school, with all staff able to raise/refer pupils they think may have additional needs.
Careful identification
School leaders report a broad approach to identification of SEND, using ‘outside agencies appropriately’ and ‘fully involving’ parents and carers in discussions, leading to a SEND register that leaders feel is accurate.
But where are the challenges?
An insightful provision map
Even where a detailed overview of current SEND provision exists, school leaders frequently give a low score when it comes to that ‘provision map’ helping their leadership by ‘providing a comprehensive summary’ or ‘giving a clear link between provision and learner progress’.
Purposeful uses of data
Many school leaders recognise there is still work to be done for data to affect practice, referring both to the formative assessment data that teachers can use to inform next steps in lessons, and the summative assessment data that can suggest where SEND assessment might be helpful or tweaks to provision might be needed.
Strategic leadership of TAs
School leaders report difficulties in maximising the impact of teaching assistants. They report that they have more work to do if TAs are to supplement and support classroom teaching, such as additional teacher-TA liaison time and providing training to teachers around how to deploy TAs effectively.
Self-evaluation is imperfect; it’s subjective by definition. Even so, at the very least it gives us clues to what schools want supported or exemplified – to what they want to improve, for the sake of their pupils.
So, in that context, what lessons can we learn from this data?
Understand what to be proud of
Sometimes, success within SEND needs to be made really explicit to colleagues. There may be colleagues who lose hope about rising needs in their school. Regular (meaningful) reminders that there are real successes may help inclusive mindsets to be maintained long-term.
Know your areas for development
Though the challenges for schools may seem overwhelming, and the workload around SEND sometimes unmanageable, identifying the changes that are high-impact, possible and can start straight away helps every school to take control of what it can around delivering excellent provision, even in the context of significant national challenges.
Consider better networking
From within our Whole Education SEND network and beyond are examples of teacher-TA partnerships that work, of data that informs practice and of provision maps that lead to the right next steps.
And therein lies the strength of well-functioning networks. Because one school’s area for development will always be another school’s strength, and while the solution for one school can’t be carbon-copied into another, a culture of generosity and sharing – which lies at the heart of any purposeful network – supports all to benefit. And therein lies a hopeful message.
Where the challenges are real, the opportunities to succeed are also extremely real.
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