Points from the SENCo‐Forum

Abstract

Forum members also mentioned the support that SENCos themselves receive through their links with specialist SEND staff, both from local authorities' education and social services and from the National Health Service. Staff have had to take account of individuals' state of health, as well as their family circumstances, such as responsibility for child care and their employment prospects. Biography To join the SENCo‐Forum please see: http://lists.education.gov.uk/mailman/listinfo/senco‐forum or email: [email protected] DfE (Department for Education) & National Centre for Social Research (2020) How Early Years Providers Support Disadvantaged Children, Children with SEND, the Home Learning Environment, and Healthy Eating.

A recent discussion on the Forum dealt with the way in which the Covid‐19 pandemic was impacting on SENCos' roles and functions in the pre‐school phase. At the statutory level, these roles and functions are set out in the relevant section of the 2015 version of the Code of Practice. The overall aim of early provision is to prepare children to achieve a sound foundation in learning and behaviour, from which they can make a crucially effective transition to the statutory primary phase. The Forum discussion considered that SENCos were to be ‘agents of change’ to ensure that provision was responsive to the special educational needs and disabilities (SENDs) of individual children and the concerns of their parents/carers. Forum members had been alerted to a recently published report on early years provision (DfE & National Centre for Social Research, 2020), carried out just before the impact of the pandemic started in January and February 2020. At a systemic level, the report set out the main forms of pre‐school provision – in early years classes in primary schools; in independent settings; and through child minders. Among the study's sample of providers, 80% of pre‐school classes had at least one child registered as having SENDs, 83% among independent settings, and 16% among child minders. Providers had called on various streams of central Government funding for pre‐school children with SENDs and also for those from areas of disadvantage. The report mentions that whether or not those responsible for settings applied for funding tended to depend on their having the time and perseverance to cope with the bureaucracy of the conditions for application and eligibility. Funding was mainly used to supplement staffing and for further professional development. Some local authorities also appointed SENCos to support provision in localities in their areas, and so formed part of the local authorities' SEND ‘offer’ specified in the Code.

Messages to the Forum indicated that SENCos' scope for influencing support for children and their parents/carers depended on the extent to which they were part of a setting's organisational system. Successive Codes of Practice have emphasised that SENCos should be allocated senior roles in schools' and settings' management so that they can take part in decisions about wider systemic policies for meeting children's needs. However, SENCos have long reported that observance of this stipulation has varied widely, reflecting the educational values of those managing the settings. Some groups of settings have collaborated in jointly funding and appointing a SENCo to provide support for children with SENDs. This enabled the settings to have access to additionally designated specialist support. Such an arrangement was recognised as acceptable in the 2015 Code, subject to regular review. The potential downside of sharing SENCos was that they might not be regarded as sufficiently ‘embedded’ in the staffing, and thus might not become familiar with the particular ways in which support was offered.

Forum members also mentioned the support that SENCos themselves receive through their links with specialist SEND staff, both from local authorities' education and social services and from the National Health Service. SENCos act as an onward referral link to this level of expertise. This is intended to offer both direct preventative intervention for individual children, and indirect preventative consultation and contributions to further professional development. One of the most significant roles of specialist staff is represented by their reports for – or participation in – decision‐making panels dealing with the allocation of education, health and care plans (EHCPs) for children identified as having SENDs. It has been well documented that, even before the onset of the pandemic, the austerity regime had led to a reduction in staffing levels in these specialist services.

The above systemic considerations form the context in which the impact of the pandemic took place. The measures to counter the risk of infection in the first phase of the pandemic – and now in the second phase – have determined how educational provision has had to be reconfigured. Pre‐school settings have paralleled other educational provision, both within settings and in outreach. Within settings, the variability of children's attendance has been influenced by their health and their parents' infection concerns. Grouping of children has separated them into socially isolated ‘bubbles’. Staff have had to take account of individuals' state of health, as well as their family circumstances, such as responsibility for child care and their employment prospects. These considerations have swamped any efforts to maintain continuity of settings' curriculum plans as well as maintaining a ‘graduated approach’ to responding to children's learning needs. The substitution of outreach schemes for children has had to be tailored according to the available technology both in settings and in children's home environments. The Forum discussion showed that the effect of these considerations reflected the flexibility of settings' prevailing approaches to learning and teaching. As far as children with SENDs are concerned, they have contributed to enhancing this flexibility and to accommodating, for example, parents'/carers' worries that they would not be able to meet the demands of home learning.

Forum members also referred to parents'/carers' anxieties about meeting the various demands of successive lockdown regulations. Predominantly parents were concerned about the risk of infection and the requirements about social isolation. These concerns related to both their individual children's health, and to the risks to parents'/carers' own employment and implications for financial coping. Forum members reported that parents/carers were apprehensive about visiting settings to evaluate the precautions that were in place. Settings had tried to take account of these concerns by devising various communication measures that addressed the lockdown regulations as they were announced. Many settings had already been maintaining contact with parents/carers through SENCos' home visits where this was called for by the needs of children, but this had then to be judged in the light of the infection risks.

This summary of the recent discussion on the SENCo‐Forum has illustrated some of the challenges facing SENCos serving the pre‐school phase of education in the circumstances of the pandemic. The scale of the challenge is illustrated by members' use of vocabulary such as ‘unprecedented’ and ‘uncharted territory’ in referring to the situations with which they are having to cope. However, as is now widely acknowledged, the present situation has also prompted questions about some of the assumptions on which the current educational system is based, and hopefully this will engender an understanding of directions for change.

Biography

• To join the SENCo‐Forum please see: http://lists.education.gov.uk/mailman/listinfo/senco‐forum or email: [email protected]

References

DfE (Department for Education) & National Centre for Social Research (2020) How Early Years Providers Support Disadvantaged Children, Children with SEND, the Home Learning Environment, and Healthy Eating. London: DfE & National Centre for Social Research.