SEND & AP Improvement Plan: Technical Solutions to Evidencing National Standards

SEND & AP Improvement Plan: Technical Solutions to Evidencing National Standards

by | Sep 11, 2023 | Alternative Provision, AP Progress Tracking, Blog, EdTech

Why is evidence of progress so important  in SEND and AP contexts?

I want to preface this blog with the assertion that it’s important to have strong evidence of student 
progress in Alternative Provision, not only because of the demands of commissioners and regulators, but because children in AP deserve the best possible opportunities to grow as learners and citizens and to make a contribution to their communities and society at large. It is our responsibility as the adults and professionals to be creative in devising ways of measuring outcomes against individual starting points and to evidence these to the world in ways that can be understood and appreciated for the work and achievement they represent.

The SEND and AP Improvement Plan (2023)

In March this year the UK Government published its SEND and Alternative Provision Improvement
Plan: Right Support, Right Place, Right Time. The document asserts new evidence-based standards as the foundation for its planned ‘nationally consistent SEND and Alternative Provision’.

It is proposed that Ofsted and/or the CQC are used to carry out area SEND inspections with a focus on ‘the outcomes and experience of children with SEND and in alternative provision’. It is also implied that as part of the imperative for financial sustainability, value for money assessment will favour targeted support in mainstream schools, time-limited interventions and transitional placements in external AP.

The Improvement Plan makes clear the critical, if not existential, challenge for APs of evidencing
their impact. It’s so important to recognise the contribution of AP to improving outcomes for
children who don’t thrive in mainstream settings. However, in providing bespoke programmes which meet the needs of children and young people with SEND, APs create packages which resist
standardised regulation. As leaders working in AP, we battle to account for the impact of our work to commissioners and other stakeholders; there is always a challenge in evidencing, measuring,
recording and analysing progress against such varied terms of reference. Clearly the SEND and AP Improvement Plan heralds an era of increased pressure in this respect.

 

Tech Solutions to the SEND and AP Improvement Plan

The ed-tech industry has been prolific, particularly post-covid 19, in producing applications which
attempt to address issues faced by alternative providers – from online teaching spaces to wellbeing and mindfulness platforms; there are also some good products which allow staff to upload evidence of student work in the form of, for example, student-created artefacts, photographs and witness statements.

However, if we are to demonstrate compliance with a set of national standards on students’ experience and outcomes, we must focus on developing robust systems which can show impact both anecdotally and through so-called ‘hard’ data. There is very little on the market which can do this, because the task is difficult and daunting. The commercial motivation is limited because the number of children affected is relatively small in relation to the mainstream market.

At Huis we have been lucky enough to partner with a team of leaders in AP committed to working on this problem. We were embedded in an AP for a number of years and with the help of colleagues in the setting we developed LearnTrek, a cloud-based portal which can record all aspects of a child’s progress, including in social, emotional and mental health, attendance, engagement, behaviour and academic achievement; it also manages safeguarding, since in APs the volume and seriousness of concerns are significantly higher than in mainstream or other types of maintained schools.

LearnTrek has developed organically out of the needs of each setting which uses it. We meet
monthly with all our clients to troubleshoot any problems and discuss additional requirements;
these respond to ideas for improvement borne out of user experience, to changes in the AP’s offer,
and to external drivers such as national or local regulation. Needless to say the demands of the SEND and AP Improvement Plan are on the agenda for many of our clients at present.

What LearnTrek can do, which other systems cannot, is to record student progress numerically,
regardless of the starting point, the tailored nature of the programme or fluctuations in the journey. For example, attendance can be recorded against a wide range of increments familiar to staff in AP. It’s a triumph for a student who has not been to school for many months to speak to a tutor or mentor through a bedroom door; the next time the staff member calls they may not speak at all, or may respond with aggression and swear words. LearnTrek can track and analyse such shifting patterns, it can recognise improvement and produce graphics and charts to illustrate the journey to the child, to parents, to colleagues, to funders and to other stakeholders.

The biggest challenge to date in developing LearnTrek has been to add a curriculum function. This
was a huge undertaking, for everyone involved in the project. The complexity of sequencing a
bespoke curriculum and breaking down outcomes into the smallest imaginable units of achievement was a labour of love, as was the process of converting these into a system which could be expressed in a series of noughts and ones.

What the work has produced, however, is a way of identifying and measuring students’ achievements, and of evidencing this with hard data. The information generated can be used for a range of purposes – to plan effectively and to identify staff training needs; to help students understand themselves as effective learners and members of the school community, and, of course, it can be used to prove impact to funders, commissioners and regulators.

The impact of the SEND and Alternative Provision Improvement Plan remains to be seen; it promises significant positive change for children and families and this is to be welcomed. The Plan is also a cause for concern among the large community of unregistered AP across the country who provide highly effective tailored programmes for children with SEND. It’s essential that we collaborate across disciplines to develop solutions which will maximise the availability of innovative and impactful provision.

Social Mobility and Lost Potential – Why Progress Tracking Matters

Social Mobility and Lost Potential – Why Progress Tracking Matters

by | Aug 25, 2023 | Alternative Provision, AP Progress Tracking, Blog

The Sutton Trust’s recent longitudinal study entitled Social Mobility: The Next Generation- Lost Potential at Age 16 (June 2023) highlights what many of us working with children and young people already know – the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged learners is already wide (or – “baked in”) from an early age and widens significantly by secondary education. The report focusses on the period of time between the end of primary school and GCSE exams, taking as its main indicator of disadvantage eligibility for free school meals and its baseline for potential (where a disadvantaged but academically capable child has the most potential for achievement) the final year of primary school.

The measure of academic achievement used in the report is GCSE English and Maths results. Learners who are identified as academically capable in Year 6 are tracked through to their GCSEs. The study overwhelming shows that disadvantaged learners perform less favourably than their non-disadvantaged peers for a range of reasons including ethnicity, poverty, levels of parental involvement, young carer responsibilities, school demographics and admissions policies, and access to technology among other reasons.

The study is hugely valuable and points to the complex mix of barriers to full potential experienced by disadvantaged children and young people, as well as the terrible cultural, socio-economic and wellbeing impacts of lost potential for these learner as well as the rest of society. The report also makes sensible recommendations for how schools and the government might help to close the attainment gaps it identifies.

However, the research conducted did get me wondering about how we might measure lost potential in ways that didn’t rely on GCSE results as a measure of achievement or “success”. How, for example, could we look at the same sort of statistics for learners who show potential at Year 6 and who go on to realise that potential in ways not so easily measured or understood as successful?

In the report, levels of Special Educational Needs are identified as “one of the biggest differentiators between the high attainer [cohort] and other disadvantaged groups”. The percentage of the disadvantaged high attainer cohort identified as having SEN in year 11 was just 9% compared to a national average of 60%, with the most common reason given as “social emotional and mental health”. While this suggests that the number of potential high attainers with SEN is much lower than those without, it is still the case that many learners with high potential find themselves unable to continue in mainstream education after Year 6. Often this will be for reasons related to trauma and mental health difficulties rather than difficulties with learning and cognition or physical and sensory SEN.

For children and young people who find themselves without a school placement or in alternative provision or other non-mainstream settings offering something other than GCSEs – how could a similar journey be tracked from academic potential in Year 6 to outcomes by Year 11? Does the metric chosen by the study (tracking a cohort through to GCSEs) demonstrate the understandable problem of gathering data on the potential of a cohort of learners in non-mainstream education – a group more invisible to statistics in terms of its own (equally important) achievements?

The answer is yes. Tracking attainment for children and young people who find themselves in alternative settings or without formal education is almost impossible at the scale demonstrated by The Sutton Trust’s important research. However, as leaders and educators we owe it to these children and young people to design ways of tracking their progress, whether through qualifications other than GCSEs or other metrics designed to assess them from their individual starting points and up to and including the GCSE achievements of their peers.

Part of supporting children and young people to understand the value of their own contributions to society is helping them recognise themselves as learners with the capacity to contribute- to be “socially mobile”. Viewing success only through the lens of the National Curriculum (and by implications GCSE qualifications) is deeply problematic for the cohort who will inevitably view themselves as failing by this measure. 

More importantly, recognising and valuing achievement more widely is a key factor in building the sort of self-worth that helps children and young people to have the confidence to go into the world and make that contribution. With the lifetime costs of NEET for children between 16-18 estimated to be somewhere between £12 billion and £32.5 billion there is an economic argument for finding ways to foster innovation in progress tracking in education and support settings. The onus is on us as professionals to innovate  so that all children and young people can socially navigate to appropriate successes depending on their own individual starting points.

In my own work in Alternative Provision and in designing educational technologies, I have recently been very focussed on how to build a full and rich picture of attainment for those whose successes can look pretty different to GCSE results but for whom the success in no less of an achievement. This has been based on a strong belief the the first step in social mobility for this cohort must be the recognition of its possibility.

The Sutton Trust’s study has certainly given me food for thought, as well as a few ideas about how to build this into future research and design of my own using both qualitative and quantitative data. I am so excited to begin sharing the new progress tracking options within LearnTrek over the next few months – hopefully, this will be a small but important step towards helping evidence potential (as well as the challenges in realising it) for other equally important  cohorts of disadvantaged students.

What is “banking compassion” and why does in matter in Alternative Provision schools?

What is “banking compassion” and why does in matter in Alternative Provision schools?

by | May 18, 2023 | Alternative Provision, Blog

n my role as a leader in an education charity with a small independent special school at its heart, I have designed and delivered courses in behaviour management which incorporate the ethos of the organization and train professionals in best practice. Key among the core values I strongly advocate for is the importance of ‘Banking Compassion’ – a term we use a lot at the school but which originates in work done by Portsmouth Local Safeguarding Board back in 2016.  It refers to the belief in continuing to invest professional love and care in the children and families we serve, without any guarantee of a return.  In attempting to explain the concept I’ve been reflecting on a day a few years ago which highlights the lived reality of ‘Banking Compassion’ for staff working in SEN.

For me the day in question was full of the usual hustle and bustle of a school day combined with meetings involving various aspects of the organisation’s work – a complex discussion about one of our  services took up most of the morning, and this was interrupted by knocks on the door and phones ringing with questions from staff, students and outside callers. A Year 11 group set off on their DofE residential – they all pitched up despite the cold and drizzly weather – a triumph in itself; there were lots of safeguarding worries to deal with, which is normal for us; there was a lot of laughter among staff and students and absolute hilarity at times – also normal!

At around 2.00 pm I received a phone call from a member of school SLT who had been assaulted by a student whilst driving him home. The incident was particularly upsetting because at one stage the student spat in this staff member’s face, a traumatic thing to deal with at any point, but at the height of a global pandemic, as we were at the time, it brought with it more acute anxieties than usual.

The manager was very calm and insisted that she was ok; she continued with her day and was there to support her team at debrief. When I spoke with her later in the afternoon, her main concern was what the child was going through, and what the consequences for him would be. She understood the implications for managing the risks going forward, but was very anxious that no decisions should be made which would have a negative impact on the child in the long run. Another colleague, who works with the same child and has been at the receiving end of some similarly dangerous behaviour, came to me to express deep concern about the impact on the student and his family of anything which would interrupt his education.  

Tough decisions have to be made, in each case, which take into account the needs of the child and the risks entailed for  her/him, for other students and for staff at the school. This is always a complex and nuanced process involving the student, parents, commissioners and other external stakeholders working with the family.  In this case significant time, energy and resources were invested in generating a raft of measures which would keep everyone safe, would avoid another painful rejection for the student and  which would ensure his needs would continue to be met, including his need for love and belonging. 

Whatever decisions are made, we check ourselves to ensure that they are underpinned by the commitment of staff to bank compassion with our children, and that this overrides other considerations. The school team build and maintain authentic relationships with students, with all the challenges and responsibilities these carry; it is in the DNA of our work to hold at the forefront of practice an enduring concern for the best interests of the children in our care, regardless of the rejection from them we face on a daily basis.

Continuing to bank compassion in the face of physical aggression, verbal abuse, threats and phlegm is a major test of our commitment to the models we rely on. Those of us who work with children who have special educational needs, the alternative is unimaginable.  

Dr Catherine Brennan

Designated Safeguarding Lead and Head of School