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In the final instalment of a special blog series, Thrive's Tom Preston takes you through the key recommendations in Supporting Education Group’s submission to the Commons Education Committee inquiry into the SEND system.
This blog was originally posted on the Supporting Education Group website.
Our submission to the Commons Education Select Committee’s inquiry into the SEND system includes a comprehensive package of recommendations drawing on Supporting Education Group’s insights supporting schools and trusts across the country.
These recommendations look at ways of achieving stability in the shorter term – rapid innovation in training and development programmes being one – as well as longer-term measures including applying data and tracking systems to measure impact and focus resources exactly where they are needed.
The third and final focus of our submission looks at what is needed to create a national framework for addressing the SEND crisis and the development of a whole school approach for trauma informed practice.
Decades of research and practice have shown that early intervention can significantly improve outcomes for children and young people with SEND. In our submission we propose that by equipping schools with the tools to identify and address SEMH needs before they escalate, we can create more inclusive, sustainable learning environments.
If we are to address the SEND crisis there needs to be a shift in how we understand and respond to pupil needs.
Rather than focusing on behaviour as a discipline issue, we must recognise it as a communication of unmet needs.
We think that a structured, whole-school approach to inclusion provides a blueprint for delivering sustainable change. This is about systemic reform that embeds SEND into every aspect of the running of schools and trusts so that it touches on leadership, communications, teaching and learning, financial management, curriculum, people, strategy, premises and facilities.
If we do this, we will allow schools and trusts to identify pupil needs earlier and upskill and support teachers and other staff to enhance support to prevent behaviour issues.
We already have a mounting body of evidence that this approach can be transformative, dramatically reducing the challenge and pressure felt by mainstream teaching and support staff working with pupils with SEND, cutting the volume (and costs) of exclusions of pupils with SEND.
For example, the implementation of SEG’s Thrive Approach in an academy trust correlated with 40.5% fewer recorded fixed term suspensions compared with the previous year, and a 78% reduction in truancy.
We’re suggesting that the government could establish a national framework for whole-school trauma-informed practice to standardise support for SEMH pupils – one of the fastest-growing needs – with clear guidelines and accountability measures for schools. These include a framework for all schools to implement trauma-informed strategies, and standards for assessing SEMH needs and tracking progress using data driven tools.
These changes would be a major undertaking, so we are proposing a national reskilling programme for all mainstream staff on SEND and inclusion to ensure that all teachers and school staff are equipped to support the increasing number of pupils with SEND in mainstream settings.
The challenge is huge, but it is not insurmountable. We think that our package of recommendations contained in our submission provides the right mix of short- and longer-term measures that could lead to a wholesale transformation of SEND across the education system.
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