40% of children currently with EHCPs would risk falling through the gaps and receiving inappropriate provision under the proposed SEND reform. Appropriate provision requires recognition of the full profile of a child’s needs, evidence-based support from a well-resourced and well-trained workforce that includes specialist Experts at Hand, and robust routes to challenge provision which does not meet needs.
While the workforce challenges and legal issues have been discussed at length elsewhere, the criteria for recognising needs and allocating provision have received less attention. Under the proposed plans, the “areas of development” and draft “Specialist Provision Packages” are key to these processes.
Areas of development
The SEND reform proposes a move away from categorisation of needs by diagnosis to barriers to learning. This shift aims to facilitate early identification and recognition of a broader spectrum of barriers to learning which map more directly onto evidence-based strategies. However, the benefits of this shift will only be realised if all barriers are included and provision then aligns with these.
Under the current Code of Practice, diagnoses fall under four “areas of need”. In the SEND reform, the barriers to learning fall under five “areas of development”. Mapping between these (see infographic) reveals movement of some barriers to different or new areas, but also the omission of some key barriers. The main changes are:
- Cognition and Learning has no equivalent in the SEND reform areas of development. While the primary barriers to learning of children with dyspraxia are in the Sensory and/or Motor and Physical areas, for children with specific, moderate, severe and profound and multiple learning difficulties, their primary barriers to learning (literacy, numeracy, cognition/learning) do not appear anywhere under the new areas of development. This omission may mean that any child with difficulties in these areas may not receive the support that they require.
- Sensory and/or physical needs is split into Sensory and Motor and Physical. The primary barriers for children with dyspraxia/Developmental Coordination Disorder now appear under these areas.
- Social, emotional and mental health difficulties is renamed as Social and Emotional and the barriers to learning associated with ADHD appear under a new area. The change in title is discussed in an article by the National Association of Special Schools.
- A new area of development, Executive Function, includes the barriers most frequently associated with ADHD, which was previously under Social, emotional and mental health difficulties.
- Communication and interaction is renamed as Speech, Language and Communication. The addition of “Speech” is welcome, although its definition as “generating sound” is too broad and a focus instead on intelligibility would be preferable.
Mapping the gaps in proposed provision
Specialist Provision Packages
The SEND reform states that nationally defined Specialist Provision Packages (SPPs) “will form the basis of an EHCP, which will outline the evidence-based educational support required by the child or young person”. Alignment between these and the barriers to learning in the areas of development discussed above might be expected. However, in several cases, the draft packages do not correspond clearly in title and/or content to the areas of development, or diagnoses (see Infographic). Below is a summary of the links, misconnections or gaps between the draft SPPs, diagnoses and barriers to learning / areas of development.
- None of the proposed SPPs cover the primary barriers to learning of children with Moderate or Specific Learning Difficulties, including dyslexia and dyscalculia (because literacy, numeracy and cognition/learning are omitted from the areas of development).
- The SPP titled Significant executive function is for children with “severe and permanent global learning disability or life-long speech or language disorder” and thus appears to be mis-labelled; executive function is not the primary barrier to learning for either of these groups. In addition, due to the differences in their learning/cognitive abilities, these two groups need different provision and therefore different SPPs. Children whose primary barrier to learning is language (e.g., the 7% of children with Developmental Language Disorder, DLD) need a mainstream curriculum but adapted for language, delivered using specific strategies (ideally in collaboration with speech and language therapists, SaLTs), plus individualised integrated intervention with SaLTs (and other specialists if they have other co-occurring barriers to learning). In contrast, children with severe global learning disability are likely to need a curriculum with more significant adaptations and access to a wider range of professionals.
- The SPP titled Complex executive function and communication is for children with a “significant permanent learning disability affecting some, or all, areas of speech, language and communication, executive function, social and emotional, motor skills and sensory development. Children who need this package often manifest with behaviour that challenges”. Thus, it seems that this package is for all children with barriers to learning under any or all of the 5 areas of development. The features that unite these children appear to be “learning disability”, or “behaviour that challenges” (not executive function or communication as suggested by the title). This draft SPP is therefore problematic in both title and content. It seems that all children with severe needs, regardless of their nature (although perhaps only those with “behaviour that challenges”), would get the same provision. It would be surprising if the evidence base really indicates that all these children should get the same “evidence-based educational support”, regardless of the nature of their profile of needs.
- Although the above two SPPs have executive function in their title, there is no SPP that specifically covers the main barriers to learning which fall under the executive function area of development.
- The Profound and multiple learning difficulties SPP caters for children with PMLD, who will have barriers to learning across many areas of development
- The area of Social and emotional development has two packages, distinguished by whether they focus on externalising or internalising behaviour
- SPPs for Sensory impairment and Physical disability do seem to link well with the related areas of development.
A proposal
The barriers to learning listed under the areas of development could form a reliable basis for identifying a child’s detailed profile of needs and hence the support and provision they require (as long as literacy, numeracy and cognition/learning are included). However, barriers to learning are not just present versus absent in a child; they vary in degree and impact. So, including an indication of the level of impact of each barrier to learning would improve decision-making. A child’s profile could be represented in a standardised manner (see table for an example for a child with DLD) and each level of impact for each barrier to learning could linked to evidence-based support in the National Inclusion Standards.
If more severe barriers to learning were given higher weightings (and therefore more support), a child’s profile of needs could then also be summed to give an overall indication of “complexity” and likely impact on daily life and education. This could in turn determine the total amount of support each child needs. A child with profound difficulties in just one area and a child with mild-to-moderate difficulties in many areas may both have “complex needs”, and may receive similar total amounts of support, but the nature and balance of that support would be very different. If provision were linked directly to a child’s profile as suggested, this would have the advantage of standardising support while accommodating widely differing profiles.
Example profile of barriers to learning and impact for a child with DLD and co-occurring fine motor difficulties
The SPPs are only in draft form and the DfE is recruiting an expert panel which will develop them further. Therefore, these packages are perhaps more likely to change than the areas of development and the barriers to learning within those areas. While a rigorous and standardised approach is desirable, trying to fit all children with SEND into just seven SPPs that dictate provision is likely to mean that many children would fall through the gaps and not receive provision that meets all of their needs. Children with SEND deserve a fair, standardised and evidence-based system that is flexible enough to ensure the full range of their needs are fully recognised and supported.