The Educator Magazine U.K. Jan-April 2024 issue - Magazine - Page 22
Increasing numbers of children are being
identified with SEND and ALN – how can
they all be supported?
According to the most recent government
data, more than 1.5m children in England
have special educational needs and
disabilities (SEND). In Wales, the government
estimates that up to 20% of children may
need special educational help during their
school journey, making up over 92,000 of
the current school-attending generation
in Wales having additional learning needs
(ALN). In England, 17.3% of schoolattending children have SEND – 13% do
not have an education, health and care
plan (EHCP), with 4.3% having one.
These numbers are rising year-on-year, too.
Schools in England and Wales will soon be
running with one-in-five children having
SEND or ALN.
Achieving the best possible outcomes
for this growing number of children is
imperative. Of permanently excluded
children in the 2022/23 school year, 67%
of them had SEND (2074 of 3104). At the
same time, 59% of children who have ever
been permanently excluded have entered
the youth justice system. That means that
there’s a 40% chance of SEND children who
have been excluded entering the youth
justice system. The knock-on effect of this
can be catastrophic.
Creating a consistent path forward
So, how can the education system respond
to this? How can it improve outcomes
for children with SEND and ALN? The
government SEND greenpaper published
back in March 2022 offers some
suggestions, not least in streamlining
EHCPs. In Wales, the ALN code takes a
different approach, with individual
development plans (IDPs) intended to be
flexible documents varying in length and
complexity depending on the needs of the
child.
EHCPs and IDPs exist to track, record and
help improve the journey of each young
person with SEND or ALN. The issue
identified and seeking to be resolved by
the Department for Education is around
how they are captured and in what format.
Similarly, there are standard templates in
Wales around which IDPS should be drawn.
As things stand, there is a loose outline for
EHCPs but the level of detail within them
is at local discretion. This has resulted in
inconsistencies at local and national levels,
leading to inconsistent responses to them.
This is particularly acute where professionals
work across two localities: getting to grips
with two interpretations of EHCPs takes time
and increases the manual, administrative
burden upon professionals. Whilst there is
more room for local discretion with IDPs,
templates will help to ensure consistency.
The path forward for EHCPs, and children
with SEND, will be provided by the DfE.
Crucially, too, all EHCPs will be digitised.
This will make them not only consistent,
but also accessible. The curation of EHCPs,
and indeed IDPs, necessitates a multiagency approach, from schools, to parents,
to professionals. Being able to access such
documents digitally makes transferring,
updating and sharing them much easier.
As we can see from the data, only 4.3% of
children have an EHCP, with a further 13%
requiring one. Creating a clear,
consistent and digital path forward will
enables schools and professionals to work
with more families on extending the best
possible provisions to children with SEND.
How technology will help
The digitisation of EHCPs and IDPs will
require the input of technology systems.
Creating templates that can be
implemented nationally will make setting
up, recording and sharing information on
such young people much easier, more
transparent and more consistent.
The next potential issue is how the different
technologies that are available in the space
can be interoperable with one another.
With different systems catering for different
needs, no local authority or school should
have a system forced upon it. Different
authorities and schools will most likely be
using different systems. For the aims of
streamlining EHCPs and IDPs to better
support children to work, systems will need
to be implement the same/similar template
for EHCPs/IDPs and share data between
them
As a technology provider in the education
sector, CACI has long seen the benefit of
interoperability with third party software
providers in the sector. The ability to send
and receive data seamlessly creates
efficiencies in the process that will be to
the ultimate benefit of the end service user,
in this case children with identified SEND
and ALN.
Creating a rich, single view of every child
can only be beneficial in data mapping,
understanding behaviours and tackling
the challenge of improving outcomes for
all children. We too often see information,
systems and processes siloed into regions
and sectors. Tackling this will be
fundamental to improving outcomes for
children with SEND and ALN.
With increasing numbers of such young
people being identified, an effective and
efficient system response will be essential to
achieving the overarching goal of improving
outcomes for them.