When trying to meet the needs of a child with SEND, the earlier help can be given the better the outcome – early diagnosis is key.
The problem quite simply, however, is that too often diagnosis does not happen early. Or at least not early enough.
Of course, it is true that it can be difficult to identify some types of SEN and learning difficulties before formal schooling begins, dyslexia being a case in point.
However, it is important, nevertheless, that wherever possible intervention begins early – ideally within the first three years of a child’s life – and continues as needed.
If we wait until a child is at school, the optimal window of opportunity has passed and, while subsequent intervention will still be effective, it will not be as successful as it could have been and will be more expensive the longer it is delayed.
As early years lecturer Hannah McCormack wrote in a recent article (2023): “There is an overwhelming acknowledgement of the benefits of early intervention on the outcomes of children with SEND being recognised and embedded within policies and legislation.
“However, despite this commitment, in practice early intervention is not available or accessible for the majority of families across England.
“The availability of SEND services and programmes are inconsistent, with a ‘postcode lottery’ often attached to them of who is able to access them.”
This places our early years workforce on the frontline, but this workforce is often not trained to spot the subtle presentation of many learning difficulties. We need to support and up-skill them to know what signs to look out for.
However, given the current level of funding offered to early years provision and the minimal wages paid to staff, it is difficult to see how this can be expected of them.
If we want the consistent identification of SEN to take place in the early years, we need to properly train, fund and support the workforce. This is even more critical with the government’s plans to expand funded childcare to those aged nine months and over.
The current SEND Code of Practice recognises the importance of early intervention and the proposed SEND and Alternative Provision Improvement Plan pushes this even more into the spotlight.
And put simply, early intervention works. The Timpson Review in 2019 noted that a child with (a particular type of) SEN was more likely to be permanently excluded from school compared to a child having no SEN.
And this gets worse the further a pupil moves through the school system – there is a direct relationship between SEN and permanent exclusion, often because of inaccurate SEN identification or inadequate intervention.
The problem is, there are not enough professionals to make the assessments and there is little to no money to fund a much-needed expansion of the system.
Indeed, I have heard of schools speaking to professionals hundreds of miles away in Scotland in order to secure professional advice.
Overworked and underfunded specialist services like educational psychologists have resorted to industrial action to try and address some of the issues, but there is no more money available, and accessing existing funding is a convoluted business.
Unlike mainstream funding, SEND funding isn’t delegated according to the number of pupils in a school. It is determined using the age-weighted pupil unit (AWPU), the number of pupils accessing free school meals, the number of pupils with Education, Health, and Care Plans (EHCPs), not to mention a host of other determiners.
Once funding is secured, it is paid in arrears and schools have to fund the first £6,000 of support out of their own already stretched budgets anyway.
And even if funding is available, the level of support is stymied by the availability of professionals as already mentioned.
To combat this, some schools and multi-academy trusts have begun to recruit their own SEND teams. These can often offer vital early identification and can be key in arranging internal support for both the child and the school, which can in-turn keep children in school.
However, SEND teams are often generalists and not as experienced as specialists coming from health and social care teams. Furthermore, SEND teams are not necessarily linked into the wider local support teams that pupils may need, including vital access to specialist provision for if things go wrong.
The stress of waiting for support is unbelievable for both the pupil and their families and schools are doing everything they can to fill in the gaps. But despite our best efforts the gaps are widening and the waiting lists are getting longer.
We want to see early intervention to support pupils, parents and teachers. We want to see early, accurate identification of SEN so that the right support can be put in place in a timely fashion.
But this comes at a cost. A cost which has to be met by government. It is not fair to leave it to the primary or even the secondary schools.
Children with SEN need to be supported from as early as possible and this means doing whatever it takes to ensure that identification happens in the early years.
- Helen Osgood is national officer for education and early years with Community Union. Read her previous articles for Headteacher Update via www.headteacher-update.com/authors/helen-osgood
Headteacher Update Spring Term Edition 2024
- This article first appeared in Headteacher Update’s Spring Term Edition 2024. This edition was sent free of charge to UK primary schools in January. A free-to-access digital edition is also available via www.headteacher-update.com/content/downloads
Further information
- McCormack: Early intervention: The gap between policy and practice, The SEND Network, 2023: https://tinyurl.com/5cue6223
- Timpson: Timpson Review of School Exclusion, DfE, 2019: https://tinyurl.com/5d7rz79w