The Children and Families Bill, bringing changes to the special educational needs (SEN) framework, is currently being discussed in Parliament. At the same time, the outcomes of the SEN consultation which ran to December 2013 are currently being reviewed by the Department for Education (DfE)[1]. One of the propositions arising from the consultation is to replace SEN statements with single education, health and care plans and to replace School Action and School Action Plus programmes with a single school-based category.

We took this opportunity to look at the trend, between 2009 and 2013, in the percentage of pupils in the current SEN categories[2] achieving three performance measures at Key Stage 4: 5+ A*-G GCSEs or equivalent, 5+ A*-C GCSEs or equivalent and 5+ A*-C GCSEs or equivalent including English and maths. The data covers pupils in all state-funded schools, including mainstream schools, special schools, academies and city technology colleges. This is important as SEN pupils are measured against their peers with no identified SEN, as well as pupils within special schools being measured alongside those with SEN in mainstream schools. Our analysis found:

5+ A*-G GCSEs

Nearly all pupils with no identified SEN achieved 5 or more GCSEs. Similarly, over 90% of pupils supported by School Action achieved the measure, with an increase of 5% over 5 years, rising from 91% in 2009 to 96% in 2013. The percentage of pupils on School Action Plus achieving this measure increased by ten percent from 76% to 86% over the same period and approximately half of the statemented pupils also achieved five or more GCSEs, increasing from 47% to 52% over the five years.

5+ A*-C GCSEs

The trend over 5 years shows a greater increase when looking at the pupils’ achievement of 5 or more GCSEs at A*-C. The percentage of pupils with no SEN achieving this measure increased by 9%, from 80% in 2009 to 89% in 2013. 23% more pupils supported by School Action achieved this measure, increasing from 46% to 69%.The percentage increase for SEN pupils on School Action Plus and those with a statement was substantial: from 30% to 58% for pupils on School Action Plus and from 15% to 29% for statemented pupils.    

5+ A*-C GCSEs including English and maths

The achievement of 5+ A*-C GCSEs including English and maths for pupils with no identified SEN increased by 9%, from 61% to 70%. The achievement of pupils on the School Action programme increased by 8%, from 21% in 2009 to 29% in 2013. The increase was greatest for pupils supported by School Action Plus; this was a 10% increase with 13% achieving this threshold in 2009 and 23% in 2013. The percentage of pupils with statemented SEN achieving these 5+ GCSEs increased by nearly 4%, from 6% to 10%, a two-thirds increase of the 2009 percentage.

The challenge of capturing performance and progress of SEN pupils

Undeniably, there has been a substantial increase in the attainment of pupils in different SEN categories. The drawback to these figures is that many SEN pupils, especially those with a statement, work below level 1 of the National Curriculum where they are assessed using performance scales (P scales). The latest national data using P scales come from 2009 and include pupils in both mainstream and special schools; however, the creation of national benchmarks for SEN pupils has raised concerns among those working with SEN pupils on the grounds of the uniqueness each pupil’s disability and the difficulty of measuring their individual attainment and progress against national data.     

To help special schools track the attainment and progress of their pupils, Learning Plus UK has developed a Datadashboard in partnership with The Bridge School London. This bespoke Datadashboard provides online interactive data analysis at various levels including whole school, key stage, year group and individual student. You can see a video about the Datadashboard here [link to the video]. It focuses on attendance, behaviour, social and emotional wellbeing, performance and targets and enables you to select pupils or groups of pupils based on their characteristics, such as primary and secondary SEN classification, gender, FSM, or EAL.  It enables tracking pupils over one or several years to tell the story behind a pupil’s attainment.

What is your opinion about the assessment of SEN pupils? What are your views on the upcoming reforms? Take a look at our infographic and we look forward to hearing from you on Twitter (@Learningplusuk) and in our LinkedIn group!

 

[1]  A summary of the proposed SEN reform can be found here. For more information, please see the DfE’s website.

[2] Definitions of SEN categories can be found in the “GCSE and equivalent attainment by pupil characteristics” SFR here.