Does classroom teaching demonstrate understanding of the daily needs of our pupils, including disadvantaged and SEND? 

Our question of the month is just one of many that are part of our Specialist Review of SEND.  We have chosen this one in particular, to enable this month’s newsletter to review the SEND context for classroom practice as faced by leaders, teachers and teaching assistants in school each day.  We are also approaching this alongside the national contexts which surround schools, colleges and trusts and are responsible for the provision, structures and resources designed to meet the SEND needs of children and young people, including at national and local authority level.   

The context for both classroom and school changed when the Children and Families Act (2014) defined SEND as a learning difficulty or disability that required special educational provision. “This provision is additional to or different from what would normally be provided for other children of the same age”.  Reforms to SEND provision were introduced to support the effective implementation of the Act, with the reforms phased in over time, with full implementation during 2018.  There was a new SEN Code of Practice (January 2015) that supported schools, local authorities and other agencies that stressed the responsibility teachers have to support the progress of all students in their class, including those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), which gives origin to our question this month.  Provision for our current SEND children and young people remains within the structures and systems created in 2014.  

In the best schools and classrooms, we constantly see well trained and experienced teachers and teaching assistants ensuring that SEND and vulnerable children receive daily ‘understanding’ of their needs, as described below:-

“A pupil has SEN where their learning difficulty or disability calls for special educational provision, namely provision different from or additional to that normally available to pupils of the same age. Making higher quality teaching normally available to the whole class is likely to mean that fewer pupils will require such support. Such improvements in whole-class provision tend to be more cost effective and sustainable.“ (SEND Code of Practice January 2015 Section 6:15 – last updated September 2024).

There has been consistent discussion and debate about ‘provision different from or additional to” before and since 2014 but I feel for our discussion the brief extract from Carol Tomlinson’s book ‘The Differentiated Classroom – responding to the needs of all learners’ is able to give voice to the classroom context, provided in our best schools:-

For me, differentiation is a manifestation of my acceptance of (a teachers’) power—and an unwillingness to look past the very particular needs that come into (my) classroom with every student every day. It is my commitment to respond to those needs—sometimes haltingly, often imperfectly—but always with the intent to say to the young person, “I see you. I care. I am here for you. You can count on me.” (Tomlinson 2014)

The second and broader context effecting leaders of schools and other agencies providing support for SEND children and young people is currently twofold. Firstly, the percentage of pupils and students identified with SEND increased between 2014 and 2019. Secondly the national consequences of the pandemic on the social and emotional well-being of children and young people ensured a further significant increase in those qualifying for SEND support in schools.  The daily needs seen in all schools and classrooms has seen even greater increases in the levels of provision needed from those in classrooms and the demands made of local education and health authorities, to meet the demands of schools and parents.   

The research “Towards an effective and financially sustainable approach to SEND in England”, recently produced by Isos Partnership, commissioned by the Local Government Association (LGA) and County Councils Network (CCN), explores the need for fundamental reform of the SEND system in England. It both reviews the current situation and offers practical advice for possible ways forward far better than I can in this newsletter.  Please use this link below for further information on this report, to stimulate the vital debate needed to ensure the needs of SEND and vulnerable children and young people are at the centre of education in 2025:-

https://www.local.gov.uk/publications/towards-effective-and-financially-sustainable-approach-send-england

It seems best to finish with some thought-provoking words around the task of “understanding of the daily needs of our pupils, including disadvantaged and SEND” to inspire those in both the main contexts we have briefly outlined above.

We have staff who are highly trained and very confident with a wide range of abilities and needs. This might be said of many schools, but we make sure that we invest time, resources and money into training for teaching assistants and teachers. Our teaching assistants are the oil that makes the Parklands machine run smoothly. They stay with classes, build incredible relationships and understand individual needs. Such is the importance of continuing professional development (CPD) for teaching assistants, that our first session this year was delivered solely to this group of staff – the heartbeat of the school.
Dyson, Chris. Parklands: A school built on love (2023)

If your default response to behaviour that is beyond the normal range is empathetic, kind and keen to understand what is being communicated, you will never go far wrong. Your knowledge of the person is more important than your knowledge of the label. I recently visited Riverbank Academy in Coventry and their approach is the same. They meet the needs of the child in front of them not the label on the jar.    

Dix, Paul. When the Adults Change, Everything Changes (2016)

Yet, for children with learning difficulties and disabilities in both mainstream and special schools we, as a society, are content for them to struggle to negotiate a steep gradient just to get within shouting distance of the rest of us. Our main achievement for this group has been to build a soul-destroying bureaucracy that drains professionals, infuriates parents and patronises children.

O’Brien, Jarlath. Don’t Send Him in Tomorrow (2016)

“No written word, no spoken plea

Can teach our youth what they should be.

Nor all the books on all the shelves,

It’s what the teachers are themselves.” 

from Nater, Swen. You Haven’t Taught Until They Have Learned (2006) Anonymous