25 Reasons Why SEND Students are Doing Worse
The Guardian newspaper greeted me with this headline today:
“Incredibly disheartening decline in special needs pupil attainment in England”.
SEND is a big deal in your school. It is a big deal everywhere. Ofsted are saying ‘it’s such a big deal, we’re going to give you a whole new INCLUSION category on school inspections’.
So, if it is such a big deal, why are SEND results declining?
To find that out, I went to read the report on which the Guardian article was based. You can read it here.
The report used KS2 data.
Translation
This is odd, if you want to measure life chances and progress over time. KS4 would make a lot more sense, right? But the DfE (Diligently Failing Expectations) doesn’t publish the GCSE progress of SEND students in performance tables, because, you know, who cares?
“The gap seems to be gradually widening as the magnitude of difference is slightly larger in 2018–2019 compared to 2014–2015 across reading, maths, and writing. This widening gap over the years suggests that current educational strategies may not be effectively addressing the learning needs of these students, leading to their progressive lag with peers in academic achievement.”
Translation:
Schools are putting a lot of effort into meeting need, and these efforts are actually worse than not putting in those efforts. What we have been told to do to support SEND students is not just ineffective. What we have been told to do is making these students worse.
Furthermore, it suggests that the aims of policy such as the Children and Families Act (DfE Citation2014) and the SEND Code of Practice (DfE Citation2015) are not completely successful in improving the academic outcomes for pupils with SEND.
Translation.
The DfE is diligently failing expectations. They do not know what they are doing. The Code of Practice is incredibly well intentioned, but following it will not improve student outcomes. It is a stick to beat you with, not a lever to raise up SEND students.
“It is important to highlight that for most SEND subgroups, on average, students’ performance is lowest in writing compared to reading and maths. Past researchers have criticised the quality of writing instruction for pupils with SEND and suggested that students are not afforded the necessary instruction in developing their writing skills (Esposito, Herbert, and Sumner Citation2023; Graham Citation2019). “
Translation
The other two areas are maths and reading. We read less difficult texts. We move through the maths curriculum more slowly. This is not working well, but not as badly as writing. Why?
Because with reading and maths we follow a progressive curriculum, however slowly. With writing, we scaffold. The more scaffolding we put in, the less the student learns for themselves. It is not progressive. It is not that we just slow writing down, we remove the thought that goes into writing. We don’t remove the scaffolding quickly, so students never learn to write independently.
We used to hang people from the scaffold, remember? Get rid of it as quickly as possible.
“In another study, nearly half of the participating teachers in England reported difficulties in instructing struggling writers; however, those who had undergone professional development were less likely to perceive supporting such students as problematic (Dockrell, Marshall, and Wyse Citation2016).”
Translation
The support we offer teachers in school tells teachers what to do with SEND students. Scaffold. Withdraw them from class to give them extra practice, rather than add extra practice before an after school. Give them a TA to do the work for them. Provide them with easier work. Put them in a bottom set with low expectations of themselves and their teacher.
This makes us confident we know what to do, and we’ll damn well do it to the best of our abilities, because we care about SEND. So, we are confident. We’ve chucked money at it. Its purpose is to make us feel good, not to do good.
And we don’t measure the progress of these interventions. We instead say, ‘we are doing everything we can’ rather than, ‘maybe we should do something different. Maybe we should do what works.’
“Furthermore, previous studies have critiqued the support mechanisms provided to students with SEND, highlighting the challenges of individualised attention from teaching assistants as a primary form of support. In England, past studies report that students with SEND spend a considerable amount of their time in schools working with teaching assistants (Webster Citation2014; Webster and de Boer Citation2021).
Translation
The main thing we get wrong is giving the student a teaching assistant. This does not work, and never has worked in a mainstream school.
Why? Because we don’t train them in how to improve the students learning. We train them on how to ‘help’ the student. This help is a crutch which stops students learning to walk.
However, evidence from reports indicate that teaching assistants do not receive adequate training to implement high quality interventions to support the academic growth of students with SEND (Carroll et al. Citation2020; L. Kim and Crellin Citation2023; Ofsted Citation2021; Sharples, Webster, and Blatchford Citation2015).”
Translation
We don’t focus on ‘academic growth’. Instead we just list what we are doing to prove that we care. We don’t actually measure whether the TA improves the student as a learner. TAs don’t measure how well the student improves as learner.
We have no idea what will improve SEND students as learners, because we have never measured it.
Furthermore, there is some evidence to suggest a negative effect of working with teaching assistants on students’ learning (Farrell et al. Citation2010; Webster Citation2014).
Translation
On average, a SEND student would do better without a teaching assistant. Teachers would spend more attention on the students learning. The teaching assistant would be doing the work for the student.
Save a bloody fortune and scale back on your use of TAs. Start measuring what works instead. When you find it, train your TAs in doing more of that! It will save a fortune because the one thing you won’t find is that giving a student a TA for the lesson is the answer. That’s the problem.
Investigations reveal that teaching assistants frequently find themselves in roles requiring much more than mere support, without adequate professional development which can result in diminished educational quality (Ofsted Citation2021).
Translation
TAs would be more effective if you trained them on ‘academic’ outcomes.
We have no evidence to get TAs to deliver other sorts of pastoral interventions. We don’t have any evidence that these pastoral interventions work. If we did, we would know what training we would need to give the TAs in what works.
Stop throwing money at your gambling addiction, and instead find a way to put your money where it will grow. (Because, like a gambler, you are assuming your use of the TA is going to outperform the national trend. You think you have a secret system no one else knows. You are a sucker, and there is one born every minute).
Where should you put your money instead of gambling with the future of your SEND students? You have to measure growth to find out. In this metaphor the growth is learning, or progress.
“Additionally, a recent survey (Warnes, Done, and Knowler Citation2022) in England emphasised that classroom teachers, when discussing inclusive practices for students with SEND, expressed a significant need for increased funding to secure specialist and support staff, as well as educational resources and appropriate infrastructure that would enhance their ability to effectively support pupils with SEND.”
Translation
We have trained teachers to believe that teaching students with SEND is too difficult.
Teachers don’t want it to be their problem to solve. They believe SEND is like toothache, which someone else can cure, rather than a lack of fitness, which an exercise regime can cure.
Teachers have become unfit for teaching. They believe the way to get better is to throw money at it - buy a gym membership and a bicycle, and then use them about once a month, and fail.
The findings further suggested that there is a risk of students with SEND being perceived as an added burden to the already challenging responsibilities of mainstream teaching.
Translation
This habit of throwing TAs and in class interventions at students has taught teachers that it is not their problem.
Teachers know it is their problem, because the students keep showing up, day after day, knowing less and less.
So teachers think the problem is way too big for them, and the only solution must be to throw more and more money at it.
We Are The Problem
But this is wrong. We are the problem. We have made SEND a burden because we have never tried to measure what works. Leaders have passed the buck. So, unsurprisingly, teachers are passing the buck.
If you would like help working out how to train your TAs to have a measurable impact, you know where to find me. (I’m way cheaper than a TA).