The report by Child of the North/ Centre for Young Lives, run by former children’s commissioner Anne Longfield, makes a series of recommendations for the new Government to deal with the SEND assessment and support crisis.
These include using new early identification tools and making CPD courses on special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) mandatory for education professionals.
The report reveals how the crisis in SEND is affecting families with the stress of trying to receive an EHC plan, with some begging councils for help and others talking about the impact on their finances and mental health.
Less than half of Education, Health and Care (EHC) plans were produced within the 20-week statutory limit, and in one local authority in the north of England young people are waiting nearly four years for an ADHD assessment, according to the report's findings.
The increasing demand for children and young people seeking assessment and support is placing significant pressure on the system. In 2021, councils faced a SEND funding gap of £600 million.
The report reveals the extent of the postcode lottery with disparities within regions in England, such as the North West and Yorkshire and the Humber, of whether EHC plans meet the 20-week target, ranging from 98 per cent to just 13 per cent.
Findings include:
- Large variability in the extent to which local authorities run the Healthy Child Programme, which can facilitate identification of SEND before school entry.
- In one local authority, one in five children do not receive their two-year developmental check, and in another this is as high as one in three.
- By the end of secondary school, the achievement gap between pupils with no identified SEND and pupils with an EHC plan is almost 3.5 years. The gap between pupils with no identified SEND and pupils with SEN support (but no EHC plan) is nearly 2 years.
- Just 30 per cent of young people with SEND achieved a Grade 4 or higher in English and Maths in 2022/23, compared to 72 per cent without SEND.
- Children with SEND are also more likely to have a probable mental health disorder – 57 per cent of children with SEND aged 6-16 years, compared with 13 per cent of those without SEND.
- 32 per cent of children with SEN(D) are persistently absent from school and children with SEND are three times as likely to be suspended from school.
The report’s recommendations, which it claims offer the potential to cut the long-term costs of not acting early enough, include:
Using holistic measures of child development to identify pupils with increased likelihood of having SEND.
New evidence shows that assessments of academic and non-academic abilities can identify those children at increased likelihood of needing SEND support. The Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP), which assesses children's academic and non-academic abilities at the age of four and five, can identify children who are more likely to require SEND support in the future.
While teachers and school leaders already have this data, the EYFSP is only conducted once in the early years and so may fail to identify children whose difficulties emerge later in childhood.
Improve and extend training on SEND for professionals and families.
Most educational professionals will interact with and support children with SEND every day but training is limited.
Continuing Professional Development (CPD) courses on SEN(D) should be mandatory for educational professionals, and s one-stop shop of online respurces developed to support professionals and families.
The report also highlights 'innovative approaches' illustrating the work that schools, universities, teachers, researchers, and others are undertaking to ensure the best possible SEND provision.
They include:
- the Electronic Development and Support Tool (EDST), an online standardised tool designed to empower teachers in identifying and supporting SEND.
- FUNMOVES, a freely available universal screening tool that empowers schools with the knowledge and skills necessary to measure their pupils’ gross motor ability. It focuses on six key playground movement skills – running, jumping, hopping, throwing, kicking, and balancing.
Anne Longfield, executive chair of the Centre for Young Lives, said she welcomed the education secretary's decision to give responsibility for improving SEND provision to the Schools Minister.
'I hope this is the beginning of a fresh start for reforming a broken system,' she said.
'Many families talk about the traumatic impact it has on their lives as they struggle to find support for their children. They are often at their wits’ end, deeply frustrated at the waiting lists and the layers of bureaucracy and hoops they need to jump through, fearful that their children’s opportunities to do well at school and beyond are being held back by an inadequate, underfunded, and overstretched system.'
The report has been produced by eight research intensive universities in the North of England – the N8 Research Partnership – in collaboration with a wider academic community (the N8+) as part of the Child of the North initiative, and the Centre for Young Lives.
Professor Uta Papen, Lancaster University, said, 'Our report, drawing on evidence based practices and new research illustrates a number of promising approaches and solutions ready to be adopted widely and promising to make a real difference to children and young people with SEND.'
- An evidence-based plan for addressing the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) assessment and support crisis is the sixth report in a series of Child of the North/Centre for Young Lives reports published this year focusing on how the new Government can put the life chances of young people at the heart of policy making and delivery.
