In the English education system, all regular schools are (effectively) required to designate a teacher to act as their 'Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator' (SENCO). This teacher has the task of co-ordinating the school's response to those students who are regarded as having special educational needs. Nationally, the proportion of such students is taken to be around 20% and includes both disabled students and those who experience other difficulties in schools - including many who would be deemed 'at risk' in other education systems. The country operates a 'mixed economy' in terms of inclusion, so that some (but not all) schools will accommodate students with very significant special educational needs.
SENCOs almost always have some brief training for their role (in the form of occasional day-long courses, for instance) but may or may not have extended training in special needs education and may or may not regard themselves as special needs 'specialists'. Likewise, they will have varying amounts of timetabled time to carry out their role. Typically, in secondary (11-16/18) schools they will have half a timetable or more for SENCO work, whilst in primary (5-11) schools, they will have less than one quarter of a timetable and may well have no timetabled time at all.
Their role is complicated by the fact that responsibility for students with special educational needs is divided between the school an the local education authority (LEA) which manages education in the area. Students with the lowest levels of need are the responsibility of the school alone. Responsibility for those with the highest level of needs is shared between school and LEA, with the LEA typically supplementing the resources available to the school for these students and specifying the provision to be made for them through a legal document called a 'statement'. For those with intermediate levels of need, responsibility is shared more informally. Typically the LEA provides peripatetic specialists (teachers, educational psychologists) who work in conjunction with the school's SENCO. However, the decision as to where the boundaries between these levels of need lie is a matter for the LEA and its services to decide. Since each LEA is free to formulate its own policy, these boundaries are different in each authority area.
SENCOs as decision-makers
Many SENCOs engage for some of their available time in teaching students with special educational needs. However, the SENCO role per se is a management rather than a teaching role. It involves co-ordinating provision, liasing with colleagues, parents and external professionals, monitoring progress and keeping appropriate records. This means that much of the role is concerned with decision-making and it is on this aspect of the role that the remainder of this paper focuses.
The expectation that SENCOs will 'co-ordinate' provision for students means, in effect, that they are engaged in a series of decisions about which students should be regarded as having special educational needs and what form and level of provision should be made for each of them. Typically, they have directly at their disposal whatever special needs resources the school has available (e.g. in the form of additional adult support) and they can also negotiate with class teachers on the one hand and with the LEA and its services on the other to release other resources or deploy them in a particular way. Both of these negotiations potentially present difficulties: class teachers may be reluctant to change their practices at the SENCO's request and LEAs are keen to ensure that the limited resources at their disposal are used effectively and efficiently. In practice, this means that LEA services tend to operate some form of control on access to their resources (e.g. by allocating fixed amounts of time to particular schools) whilst most LEAs have developed criteria which have to be met before students are offered statements and the resources which usually go with them.
Given the variation in LEA policies and the even greater variation in terms of patterns of provision and decision-making at school level, the process of matching needs to resources has historically been complex, conflicted and unpredictable. In response to this situation and, in particular, to continuing upward pressure on LEA resources, the government in 1994 issued a special educational needs Code of Practice (DfE, 1994) with the intention, in the words of one government official, of 'bringing order where there was chaos'. The Code attempted, amongst other things, to create a more rational and equitable system by imposing a common framework for decision-making in a situation which had previously been characterised by considerable diversity. It did this through a 'staged assessment procedure'. In brief, five 'stages' were created to organise the levels of provision which could be brought to bear to match different levels of need:
Significantly, the Code did not specify the levels of need which should lead to placement at each of these stages. In line with practice in England since the 1981 Education Act, decision-making was seen to depend on a careful assessment of each individual student's needs rather than on the application of a formula or of unambiguous criteria relating to levels of attainment or difficulty. Instead, the Code specified procedural criteria. In other words, it set out in very broad terms the procedures schools and LEAs should have implemented before deciding to place a student on one or other stage. In particular, it set out an expectation that there should be clear evidence that a student's needs were not being met at a lower stage before moving her/him to a higher one. However, it did not attempt to specify what level of performance should be regarded as evidence in this sense for any particular stage. The implication of this, of course, meant that considerable scope remained for SENCOs and for LEAs to develop - explicitly or otherwise - their own criteria for placement.
The project
Prior to the general election of 1997, the then government had already resolved to revise the Code in the light of experience of its operation. This intention was renewed by the incoming Labour government and a draft revision has now been issued (DfEE, 2000). The Government's programme of action for special needs education (DfEE, 1998) also promised guidance in the form of case studies on the provision to be made by schools for children with different levels of special educational needs and that provided by schools with help from LEAs. The Thresholds Guidance, issued for consultation alongside the revised Code of Practice, fulfils that commitment. This document is based on research carried out by the Special Needs Research Centre at the University of Newcastle and commissioned by the government's Department for Education and Employment. It is aspects of this research which are reported here.
A major aim of the research was to investigate the sorts of criteria currently being used (i.e. under the original Code) to place students on the stages of the Code by SENCOs and LEAs. The investigation was conducted over a series of phases:
Phase 1: A national questionnaire survey of LEAs to elicit information
on the nature and extent of guidance available to schools
Phase 2:
Interviews with key informants to elicit the detail regarding the operation of
the Code in a sample of LEAs identified from Phase1
Phase 3: Case studies
in 'effective practice' schools identified by the LEAs from Phase 2 to
establish how the mechanics of the school-based stages operated.
Phase 4: A
series of workshops for professionals and parents held in regional centres
together with other development activities to field test emerging ideas and
models of what might constitute appropriate guidance.
Phase 5 Consultation
on the draft guidance with a reference group representing a wide range of
experience in the field of special educational needs.
Additionally, the research team were able to field test versions of the guidance in a number of venues as part of their professional development work with teachers and other education professionals. This considerably enhanced the extent of the consultation process that took place and, although not a formal part of the research process, contributed significantly to the production of the draft Thresholds guidance.
Phase 3 involved extended interviews with some 37 SENCOs (or equivalent) across 8 LEA areas. SENCOs were asked to describe in detail the criteria and processes they used in decision-making and the provision which followed from those decisions for students with different levels and types of special educational need. The questioning began with the lowest level at which the SENCO might expect to be directly involved - stage 2.
Placement at stage 2 SENCOs reported that they used the following criteria in placing students with general learning difficulties (GLD), emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBD) and specific learning difficulties (SpLD - equivalent to learning disabilities in some other systems) at stage 2 of the Code:
Some caution is needed in comparing these figures due to the fact that there are 26 schools reporting on GLD students compared to 5 schools reporting on EBD students and 6 on SpLD students.
By far the most important factors were teacher concern and lack of progress, with parental concern also an important consideration. In exploring these issues with SENCOs it was evident that the first two issues were generally regarded as essential conditions for placement on stage 2. Indeed most SENCOs elided these criteria so that it was teacher concern about a 'lack of progress' which prompted them to consider placement.
In order to explore this process further, SENCOs were invited to discuss the evidence that they would draw upon in considering placement at stage 2. Their responses are presented as table 2
Although these responses are complex, it is possible to discern certain patterns. Crucially, SENCOs appear to reinforce the concerns about lack of progress with reference to a combination of data from test scores and the intuitive professional judgements of their colleagues. For students with EBD SENCOs place more emphasis on the judgement of their colleagues, but for general learning difficulties they are likely to have greater recourse to data from test scores. For specific learning difficulties, SENCOs are almost equally divided over the emphasis they would give to teacher judgements or standardised scores. These findings are not wholly surprising. Neither is the weighting given to the length of time spent on previous stages in the decision whether or not to place a student with EBD onto stage 2. In cases of students with EBD there is a reasonable concern that if previously taken action is not being effective then there is a need for additional steps to be taken to respond to the needs of potentially the most problematic students in school.
It is worth noting that the elision which took place between 'teacher concern' and 'lack of progress' is also evident in general terms between 'criteria' and 'evidence'. A distinction was made between these two in the interview process on the assumption that SENCOs would operate with a set of clear criteria for placement (such as low attainment, or lack of access to the curriculum) and would then call upon a range of evidence in each individual case to determine whether those criteria had been met. In practice, most SENCOs found it extremely difficult to disentangle the notion of evidence from the notion of criteria, just as they found it difficult to disentangle teacher concern from lack of progress.
To a certain extent, this difficulty reflects the subtlety of the distinction they were being required to make. However, it also indicates the nature of the decision-making process as it was understood by SENCOs. By and large, they did not have single, clear criteria that they were able to apply in all cases and that would be supported by independently-collected evidence. Rather, they made case-by-case decisions by weighing up a wide range of factors. These factors included the student's attainments, the extent of any concern expressed by teachers and parents, the lack of any apparent response to current interventions and so on. SENCOs were, therefore, able to identify some very broad principles governing their decision-making in terms of 'teacher concern' and 'lack of progress', but were, for the most part, unable to operationalise these at the level of detailed criteria and supporting evidence.
SENCOs were then asked to describe the process they used in coming to a decision. Their responses are presented as table 3
The most common pattern appears to be that class or subject teachers raise their concerns about the lack of progress of certain students with the SENCO who then initiates a course of action to determine whether these concerns warrant a stage 2 placement. Typically, this process involves a range of staff rather than the SENCO acting alone. In most cases the SENCO appears to consult with class and or subject teacher and, if available, with other members of the SEN team. This process of consultation may also extend to the learning support assistant (LSA - a non-teaching adult employed to support students with special educational needs) and head teacher or other member of the senior management team. In a few cases, parents also were closely involved.
Again, however, there was considerable elision between SENCOs' responses to questions about the decision-making process and their responses to questions about criteria and evidence. It was not uncommon, for instance, for SENCOs asked about their stage 2 criteria to respond in terms of the decision-making process - along the lines of, 'we all meet to talk about the students who are causing us concern', or, 'we review every class in turn during the first term'. In fact, the extent of elision in SENCOs' responses made the interview process both lengthy and highly problematic since SENCOs clearly found it extremely difficult to disaggregate the different elements of decision-making for the purpose of explaining them to the research team.
This seems to reinforce the suggestion that SENCO decision-making is a complex and by no means fully explicated process. At its best, it takes the form of a collaborative exploration by SENCO, teachers and parents of their concerns about particular students, informed by general notions of what the student should be achieving, but without any attempt to apply arbitrary 'cut-off' points (in the manner of some LEA sets of criteria). The dangers of this process, however, are obvious. The prominent role played both by 'teacher concern' as a criterion and by consultations with teachers as an essential part of the process means that there is a strong possibility that those students who come most often and forcefully to the attention of their class and subject teachers will be the ones most likely to be placed at stage 2. In the absence of any clear notions of evidence or any detailed criteria, it is far from certain that these will necessarily be the students with the greatest levels of special educational need.
The differing extents to which these dangers were realised often became apparent. In some schools, for instance, the process very much took the form of a more-or-less direct response by the SENCO to the expressed concerns of her/his colleagues. In other schools, however, it was clear that there was a more formal moderation procedure in the sense that those concerns were set alongside a range of 'objective' evidence (assessment results, observations and so on) and there was an attempt to develop some sort of 'case law' within generalised principles, if not quite to develop detailed criteria as such. This latter sort of process seemed, on the face of it, much more likely to deliver rational and equitable decisions.
Placement at stage 3
SENCOs were asked a similar set of questions about their decisions to place students at stage 3 of the Code. It is important to remember that stage 3 is distinguished from stage 2 by the involvement of LEA services who operate within their own constraints and criteria.
Some caution is needed in comparing these figures due to the fact that there are 26 schools reporting on GLD students compared to 5 schools reporting on EBD students and 6 on SpLD students.
Although there are some variations in the pattern established for placement on stage 2, SENCOs continue to rely heavily on a notion of concern about a lack of progress. For students with general learning difficulties, what is most noticeable is the increased significance of parental concern. It appears that, as parents become aware of their child's difficulties, they are more likely to express their concerns to the school. This may well reflect the involvement of parents in the drawing up or at least notification of the production of an IEP. Once alerted, many parents may well take a closer interest in the progress of their child and seek additional provision. If these concerns are endorsed by professional opinion in the school there would appear to be an increased chance of the student's being placed on stage 3.
For students with EBD, most of the respondents reported that they would request a move to stage 3 when they felt that they needed more support from the LEA or a level of external agency involvement. This may well reflect a fast-tracking policy which stems from a feeling on the part of many schools that they exhaust their repertoire of resources to deal with these students more quickly than in the case of students with general learning difficulties. It was also reported by some SENCOs that, with certain difficulties and in cases where schools believed that the only way they could respond to a student's needs was by accessing external resources, placement on stage 3 was part of a 'rapid response' tactic. In such cases, stage 2 was often little more than a token paper exercise. However, concerns about lack of progress and a failure to meet targets are also significant factors for SENCOs when reviewing students with EBD.
A similar pattern can be observed in connection with students with specific learning difficulties where again SENCOs looked to stage 3 as a means of accessing 'expertise' which they felt they did not possess.
SENCOs were then asked to describe the other evidence they used when making a decision to place a student at stage 3.
Table 5. Evidence used by SENCOs for placement at stage 3
Some caution is needed in comparing these figures due to the fact that there are 5 schools for EBD and 6 for SpLD compared to 26 for GLD
As at stage 2, SENCOs had some difficulty disentangling the notions of 'criteria' and 'evidence'. No single form of evidence appeared to be decisive for SENCOs in making decisions about a placement on stage 3. SENCOs weighed up a range of factors in addition to the concern about lack of progress - the most important being their own judgement on the basis of their observation of the student, or the students' responses to IEP targets. In the case of students with EBD, SENCOs reported that where they were concerned about the safety of others (peers or staff), this would be a significant consideration. Some schools reported that this was also age-related in that they were concerned that, as students got older, they were likely to present a greater level of difficulty. In one school this concern was a structural feature, with students' being automatically moved to stage 3 once they began Year 4.
SENCOs were asked which of the factors they took into account they regarded as being most important. Responses suggested that the most important reasons for placing a student with general learning difficulties on stage 3 were a combination of the judgement of the SENCO and the recognition that the school could not make any further progress with the student unless there were additional resources from the LEA. For students with EBD similar considerations were important, although for these students issues of safety either for other students or staff would be a factor, as would a view that the level of difficulty presented by a student was creating an unacceptable level of disruption in the class.
There is, of course, a parallel between the de facto criteria for placement at stage 2 and those employed at stage 3. In the former case, class teachers are concerned that they cannot enable the student to make any further progress without additional human, material or intellectual resources from the SENCO. In the latter case, the SENCO is concerned that the school as a whole cannot enable to student to make further progress without additional resources from LEA services. This pattern is, of course, very much in line with the procedures recommended by the Code and, at its best, facilitates a sensitive assessment of the students' needs on the basis of his/her responses to classroom - and school-based interventions. However, there would appear to be some dangers, both in terms of an expectation that one set of interventions has to fail before another, more appropriate set can be called into play, and in terms of the perverse incentives for class teachers and schools to over-state their inability to cope with students in order to access additional support.
SENCOs were then asked about the processes they followed in deciding to place students at stage 3. Their responses are presented as table 6.
Table 6. Processes followed by SENCOs in coming to a decision about placement at stage 3
As at stage 2, considerable importance is attached to meetings with relevant school staff before any formal decision was made. The staff most commonly involved in the decision making process were the SENCO and the studehnt's class/subject teachers. A number of schools also involved parents in the meetings, or at least brought in parents to discuss the outcomes of the meetings. Senior management, head teachers and school support teachers and assistants were also involved in certain cases. The SENCO often consults with any relevant external support staff who are involved with the student for their assessment. The role of external services is explored more fully in the next question.
Given that stage 3 involves LEA services as well as the school, SENCOs were asked how the responsibility for placing a student at stage 3 was divided between the school and LEA. Responses to this question are displayed below in Table 7.
Table 7 . Division of responsibility for placing a student at stage 3.
Given that stage 3 implies the involvement of external services in making provision, it is not surprising that the LEA is involved decision-making at this stage. Typically, the school proposes students to the LEA services, (usually a learning support service member or EP), and the services review the available evidence, often supplementing it through an additional assessment. In some cases, the service member needs to take the case back to an LEA panel or head of service for decision. Alternatively, service members may have considerable autonomy in decision-making, though they have a finite amount of time to give to the school and therefore can only accept a limited number of cases. Some schools, therefore, commented that they may restrict the number of referrals as they may have other issues that need discussing with the EP during their allocated time. In other instances, schools make the decision to place a student at stage 3 and justify this placement at a later date to the LEA, usually at an annual monitoring meeting.
SENCOs were asked whether they were clear as to the criteria which the LEA and its services used at stage 3. Whilst SENCOs in some authorities had a clear view, others did not. As one SENCO in an LEA with a panel system put it, "the panel is a total mystery". Several respondents described the criteria as a tick-list of evidence which includes the use of IEPs, prior involvement of LEA services, involvement of parents and test results. Some SENCOs thought that the LEA's criteria were based on the needs of the student in question over and above the needs of others in the school and whether or not in-class support would have any impact on this students' progress.
In the case of students with specific learning difficulties, one school provided the research team with the LEA's guidance document which states that the student must have received input from the EP and that the student is functioning at or below 5th centile in language, reading and spelling. However, such clarity was rare.
Placement at stage 4
SENCOs were asked a similar set of
questions about the placement of students at stage 4. This is the stage at
which formal assessment of the student's needs is carried out by the LEA.
SENCOs, therefore, cannot technically place students at this stage. They can
make a request for an assessment, but the decision is in the hands of the LEA.
Table 8. Criteria used by SENCOs for requesting placement at stage 4.
a. schools reporting on GLD students:
| a) teacher concern | 18 | 69% |
| b) lack of progress | 15 | 58% |
| c) low attainment | 4 | 15% |
| d) Gap between peers | 2 | 8% |
| e) IEP targets | 7 | 27% |
| f) poor attendance | 1 | 4% |
| g) parent concern | 15 | 58% |
| h) student concern | 5 | 19% |
| i) progression to stage 5 | 3 | 12% |
| j) Increase in the level of resources/expertise needed | 7 | 27% |
b. schools reporting on EBD students
| a) teacher concern | 3 | 60% |
| b) lack of progress | 3 | 60% |
| c) low attainment | 0 | 0% |
| d) Gap between peers | 0 | 0% |
| e) IEP targets | 1 | 20% |
| f) poor attendance | 0 | 0% |
| g) parent concern | 2 | 40% |
| h) student concern | 0 | 0% |
| i) progression to stage 5 | 0 | 0% |
| j) Increase in the level of resources/expertise needed | 1 | 20% |
c. schools reporting on SpLD students
| a) teacher concern | 2 | 33% |
| b) lack of progress | 1 | 17% |
| c) low attainment | 0 | 0% |
| d) Gap between peers | 0 | 0% |
| e) IEP targets | 0 | 0% |
| f) poor attendance | 0 | 0% |
| g) parent concern | 2 | 33% |
| h) student concern | 0 | 0% |
| i) progression to stage 5 | 0 | 0% |
| j) Increase in the level of resources/expertise needed | 1 | 17% |
Table 9. Other evidence used by SENCOs
a. schools reporting on GLD students:
| a) teacher judgements | 9 | 35% |
| b) test scores | 17 | 65% |
| c) national curriculum assessment level | 4 | 15% |
| d) classroom observations | 9 | 35% |
| e) performance in relation to meeting IEP targets | 6 | 23% |
| f) lenght of time at previous stage | 9 | 35% |
| g) IEP reviews | 14 | 54% |
| h) parent account | 3 | 12% |
| i) student account | 1 | 4% |
| j) previous student profiles | 5 | 19% |
b. schools reporting on EBD students
| a) teacher judgements | 2 | 40% |
| b) test scores | 1 | 20% |
| c) national curriculum assessment level | 1 | 20% |
| d) classroom observations | 2 | 40% |
| e) performance in relation to meeting IEP targets | 1 | 20% |
| f) lenght of time at previous stage | 1 | 20% |
| g) IEP reviews | 2 | 40% |
| h) parent account | 1 | 20% |
| i) student account | 1 | 20% |
| j) previous student profiles | 0 | 0% |
c. schools reporting on SpLD students
| a) teacher judgements | 1 | 17% |
| b) test scores | 3 | 50% |
| c) national curriculum assessment level | 1 | 17% |
| d) classroom observations | 0 | 0% |
| e) performance in relation to meeting IEP targets | 0 | 0% |
| f) lenght of time at previous stage | 1 | 17% |
| g) IEP reviews | 0 | 0% |
| h) parent account | 0 | 0% |
| i) student account | 0 | 0% |
| j) previous student profiles | 1 | 17% |
Some caution is needed in comparing these figures due to the fact that there are 5 schools for EBD and 6 for SpLD compared to 26 for GLD The factors which lead SENCOs to press for a statutory assessment at stage 4 are, by and large, similar to those which persuade them to place students on the earlier stages of the Code - that is, 'teacher concern' about 'lack of progress'. Indeed, SENCOs found it very difficult to identify any qualitative difference between the criteria for the different stages. The principal difference between students at stage 4 and those at stage 2, therefore, is simply that the former have been failing to make progress for longer and have failed to respond to a more protracted series of school and service interventions. Indeed, this temporal dimension is explicit in many LEAs where the passage of a number of IEP reviews (usually two) without significant progress constitutes one of the written criteria produced by the LEA to govern movement to the next stage. In principle, this ensures that students are not prematurely labelled and that schools are encouraged to use their delegated resources to the full before calling for additional support. However, there is a real danger that students will fail for too long with inappropriate provision before steps are taken to rectify the situation - particularly if the processes leading to statutory assessment an the assessment process itself are protracted.
Given the key role played by the LEA at stage 4, it is not surprising
that, when SENCOs were asked which of the factors involved in decision-making
they regarded as most important, the EP's judgement emerged as of particular
importance. SENCOs tend see themselves, therefore, as having to amass a range
of evidence - test scores, IEP reviews, teacher observations and any LEA
service reports - in order to present a strong case to the EP and/or to any LEA
panel. A few, however, do not refer students for statutory assessment, as they
are located in authorities where a statement does not bring additional funding.
As one school commented:
The LEA has an inclusion policy which involves
consultation meetings and advice at stage 3. The LEA's policy to reduce the
level of statements means that the school receives funding for LSA support
starting at stage 2 and LEA advice at stage 3.
SENCOs were asked if they were aware how the LEA reached its decisions about whether or not to offer a formal assessment. By and large, they were somewhat uncertain as to how this was done. Over half of the SENCOs interviewed were not aware of the LEA's criteria, though they were familiar with the sorts of evidence routinely demanded of them by their LEAs. Some, who claimed that they were aware of the criteria nonetheless could go little further than saying that the decision was based on professional judgement and "some form of LEA criteria". They were equally uncertain as to who made the decision. A number referred to a 'panel', while others thought that the EP alone makes the final decision. There was a sense that parents could sometimes influence the decision through the appeals process.
Although the investigation as a whole went on to consider placement at stage 5 (i.e. the production of a 'statement' of special educational needs), decisions at this stage lie exclusively in the hands of the LEA rather than the SENCO. It is now appropriate, therefore, to turn to the implications of these findings.
Discussion
A number of issues arise from this review of
decision-making processes.
SENCOs as decision-makers
The first and most obvious is that SENCOs in English schools are continually involved in complex decision-making processes which centre on matching students' 'needs' to stages of the Code - and hence to levels and forms of provision. This involvement has been recognised formally in the National Standards for Special Educational Needs Co-ordinators (TTA, 1998) which provide guidance for auditing training needs. However, the extent to which it is reflected in the actual training received by SENCOs is less certain - particularly since training for most of them is not extensive. Certainly, in terms of the changing role of special educators in regular schools, it is evident that this aspect of the role demands skills that are quite different from those which are involved in teaching students with special educational needs. These include:
There is no reason to assume that ordinary class teachers who are designated as SENCOs will have these skills or this expertise. However, neither is there any reason to assume that special educators who have been trained to teach students with special educational needs will be much better equipped. Moreover, although the form of decision-making reported here is tied closely to the English system, it seems probable that similar decisions have to be made in other national systems - and that these may well be made by SENCO-equivalents.
It is important to note, in particular, that some of the more radical reconstructions of the role of special educators in regular schools may change the form of these decisions, but not the necessity for their being made. For instance, the move towards more inclusive approaches, in which not only are students with special educational needs educated in regular schools and classrooms, but the (inevitably) arbitrary distinction between 'special' and 'regular' or 'ordinary' needs is problematised, can be seen as requiring just such a reconstruction (Ainscow, 1993, 1994; Clark, Dyson, Millward, & Skidmore, 1997; Dyson, 1990). Certainly, such developments avoid the need for categorising students and open up the possibility of much more fluid responses to their learning needs, with decisions about those responses being taken primarily at the classroom level. However, although the location of those decisions might change, it is still necessary for the essential decision with which SENCOs are faced - what provision should be made for which students - to be made at some point or other. Regardless of the nature and orientation of the special/inclusive education system, therefore, some explication of the decision-making process and some formal training in decision-making would seem to be necessary.
The nature of decision-making in special needs education
Perhaps of wider significance is that nature of decision-making as it emerges from this study. In principle, special needs decision-making is a rational process. Evidence about the attainments and difficulties experienced by students is set against knowledge of the responses and resources that are available to enable those students to learn more effectively. Some rational decision can then be reached about what provision matches what type and level of 'need'.
In practice, this hoped-for rationality is compromised by a number of factors:
1. Decision-making is situated in a (political) context
It is
clear that SENCOs are by no means entirely free to act in accordance with some
dispassionate consideration of the evidence that is available to them. Rather,
they have to take into account, amongst other things, resource-constraints at
school and LEA level, the practices and procedures of the LEA and its services,
the concerns of their teacher colleagues and the views and wishes parents. Not
all of these considerations relate in any clear way to an assessment of the
student's needs. Parents, teachers and the LEA all have vested interests in
achieving particular outcomes from the decision-making process - outcomes that
may well be incompatible with one another. To this extent, the context for the
SENCO's decision-making is a political one in which the construction of the
student's needs and the appropriate response to those needs is necessarily
contested.
2. Decision-making is not informed by outcomes evidence
One
thing is remarkable about the decision-making process undertaken by SENCOs is
the extent to which it is 'front-loaded'. What we mean by this is that the
focus of SENCOs' attention is on the difficulties experienced by students
rather than on the proven effectiveness of particular teaching strategies or
forms of provision. By and large, SENCOs' decisions, as they explained them,
did not begin with the range of strategies at their disposal and the known
efficacy of each one, then proceed to the identification of students who might
benefit from them. Rather, SENCOs started with the students' difficulties, used
these to determine placement on one or other stage and left the details of any
intervention in those difficulties somewhat vague. In general, interventions
were specified only in terms of levels of resourcing (for instance, number of
hours' adult support, or placement in a reduced-size teaching group) rather
than of pedagogic approaches.
In this respect, SENCOs were following a lead given by LEAs, who likewise spent a great deal of time and energy assessing students' needs at stage 3 and above, but frequently specified the resultant provision at stage 5 simply in terms of the number of hours of learning support assistant time to be allocated to the student. As we have argued elsewhere, this lack of concern with outcomes is endemic in the English special needs education system (Crowther, Dyson, & Millward, 1998).
3. Decision-making is opaque and implicit
At various points
in our review of SENCOs' practices, we referred to their 'elision' of criteria,
evidence and process in decision-making. What is evident is that the
decision-making process is not a transparent and explicit one in which
particular student characteristics or difficulties can be matched unequivocally
to particular forms of provision. Rather, a whole range of factors is weighed
together and a decision is reached by what is, more or less, an intuitive
process. Key criteria, such as 'lack of progress' and 'teacher concern' are
never fully explicated, for instance, let alone quantified. As a result,
decisions have to be made by weighing up some 'sense' of how strong these
factors are against a range of other considerations (such as the contextual
factors outlined above).
To be sure, there are steps towards explicating this process in some schools, but we came across no instance of a process which could be implemented entirely without the exercise of 'judgement' by a SENCO who knew child, school and LEA context in some detail. Again, SENCOs were simply following an LEA lead in this respect. Although we found many LEAs with explicit criteria for deciding which students should receive a formal assessment, all of these left considerable scope for 'judgement' in terms both of which students who met the criteria would actually be assessed and, more particularly, which of the students who were assessed would go on to receive a statement.
Implications
Since the Warnock Report of 1978 (DES, 1978) and its (partial)
implementation in the 1981 Education Act, the English system of special needs
education has been organised around two fundamental principles:
1.
Provision for students experiencing difficulties in schools is to be based on a
concept of 'need'. In other words, an appraisal of the pattern of attainments,
characteristics and difficulties demonstrated by students will reveal the
provision that they 'need' in order to enable them to be educated in some
meaningful sense.
2. The assessment of 'need' is an individualised process
in which the particular characteristics of each student is to be considered in
relation to the particular context within which that student is educated
At their best, these principles lead to a flexible system in which decisions about provision are based on a sensitive consideration of each student's characteristics, difficulties and situation, supported by a careful weighing of the evidence relating to each of these factors. This process avoids, amongst other things, the need for crude categorisation or the 'blanket' deployment of routinised strategies and forms of provision. However, they also leave considerable scope for a somewhat opaque process in which decisions are taken on the basis of no very clear criteria, without the benefit of what, in medicine, would be called 'protocols' and without much regard to what these decisions lead to by way of outcomes. Decision-making then becomes a rather rudderless process, only lightly anchored to evidence, subject to little external guidance and with minimal feedback in terms of effectiveness. Moreover, in such a situation, the role of the individual decision-maker becomes crucial, since it is from their 'judgement' of the unique circumstances of each case above all else that decisions emanate.
It is our contention that our study of SENCO decision-making reveals both the positive and negative aspects of these principles at work. SENCOs are special needs decision-makers par excellence, charting a course through tricky waters with only the minimum of external guidance. Sometimes, they navigate well. It would hardly be surprising, however, given the complexity of the task and their (generally) low levels of preparation for undertaking it, if their decisions were sometimes arbitrary, puzzling, or plain wrong.
There are, it seems to us, two possible solutions. One is that the SENCO workforce needs to be much more highly trained and to operate within a system which bases its decisions much more on the use of evidence and feedback loops. It seems to us that this development is highly unlikely given the very considerable cost which would be involved, not only in training SENCOs, but also in creating a career path, particularly in primary schools, which would make it worthwhile for the system as a whole and individual SENCOs in particular to invest in such training.
The second solution is to move towards a system which is generally more evidence-informed, not so much at the level of determining distinctive provision for each individual student (since this would still require a highly-trained SENCO in every school), but in terms of making available proven strategies to be deployed in predetermined circumstances. Put another way, the second solution involves moving towards a more 'protocol-driven' system which places less onus on the individual decision-maker to devise strategies ab initio. Whilst this solution is not without its dangers, it reflects an approach which has hitherto been conspicuous by its absence from special needs education in England and which, we suggest, merits further exploration.
One final point is concerned with the relationship of these issues to the international move towards more inclusive approaches and the consequent changes in role for special educators in regular schools. A widespread (though not universal) assumption amongst inclusion advocates is that inclusive education demands what the Salamanca Framework (UNESCO, 1994) calls 'child-centred' approaches. This in turn implies that special educators will operate in close collaboration with regular education teachers and that their roles will be reconstructed in some of the radical ways alluded to above. Insofar as this leads to an avoidance of crude categorisation and needless segregation, it is difficult not to be supportive of such a move. However, insofar as it implies the sort of unstructured and individualised decision-making, delegated to the level of individual schools and classrooms, which has been typical of the English system, it begins to ring certain alarm bells.
A debate which has not taken place in the inclusive education movement is that around the balance between individually-responsive pedagogy and the systematic deployment of evidence-based strategies. This may not be surprising, given the unfortunate history of categorisation and segregation against which inclusion is a reaction. However, as the inclusion movement matures, it may well be a debate that we should now have.
References
Ainscow, M. (1993). Towards effective schools for all ; a reconsideration of the special needs task. Paper presented at the Seminar on Policy Options for Special Educational Needs in the 1990s, Institute of Education, University of London.
Ainscow, M. (1994). Special Needs in the Classroom : A Teacher Education Guide. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers/UNESCO Publishing.
Clark, C., Dyson, A., Millward, A., & Skidmore, D. (1997). New Directions in Special Needs: Innovations in mainstream schools. London: Cassell.
Crowther, D., Dyson, A., & Millward, A. (1998). Costs and Outcomes for Pupils with ModerateLearning Difficulties in Special and Mainstream Schools (RR89). London: DfEE.
Department for Education (DfE). (1994). Code of Practice on the Identification and Assessment of Special Educational Needs. London: DFE.
Department of Education and Science (DES) (1978). Special Educational Needs: Report of the Committee of Enquiry into the Education of Handicapped Children and Young People (The Warnock Report). London: HMSO.
Department for Education and Employment (DfEE). (1998) Meeting Special Educational Needs: A programme of action. London: DfEE.
Department for Education and Employment (DfEE). (2000). SEN Code of Practice on the Identification and Assessment of Pupils with Special Educational Needs & SEN Thresholds: Good practice guidance on identification and provision for pupils with special educational needs (drafts for consultation). London: DfEE.
Dyson, A. (1990). Effective learning consultancy: a future role for special needs co-ordinators ? Support for Learning, 5(3), 116 -127.
Teacher Training Agency (TTA). (1998). National Standards for Special Educational Needs Co-ordinators. London: TTA
UNESCO. (1994). Final Report: World conference on special needs education: Access and quality. Paris: UNESCO.
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