An NUT Survey of SENCOs: ‘There is Always More to Do’ (April 2012)

Key Findings: the views of special education needs co-ordinators

  • Nearly three quarters (74%) of respondents reported that over the last two years the amount of external support to the school for pupils with SEN had decreased. SENCOs described the restructuring of SEN support services, staffing cuts in support services and withdrawal of support to schools.
  • Not only has the amount of external support to schools decreased in three quarters of schools in the last two years, but nearly half of SENCOs (47%) reported that quality has also worsened over this period because of the pressure on support services and the number of redundancies.
  • SENCOs are pessimistic about the future. Two out of every three in this sample (67%) predict that the amount of external support available for pupils with special educational needs will decrease further from January 2012. The survey also asked about predicted levels of support for pupils with SEN from within the school. One third (33%) felt that in-school support would decrease from January 2012 because of funding issues and reductions in numbers of staff. This included reductions in posts for teaching assistants working with pupils with SEN.
  • 65% of SENCOs opposed the government’s plans to give parents of pupils with SEN a legal right to control some of the funding for SEN provision. Only 13% were in favour of this proposal.
  • SENCOs do not welcome the government’s proposals to give voluntary and community groups a role in co-ordinating statements in place of the local authority. 64% said that they disagreed with this. Only 8% said it was a good idea.
  • 78% of respondents receive non contact time for their SEN co-ordination responsibilities but not all SENCOs have sufficient time to carry out the responsibilities of the post. Over half of the respondents (55%) identified ‘a lack of financial resources’ as the greatest obstacle to providing them with sufficient non contact time.
  • 33% of SENCOs felt that their school’s priorities lie elsewhere and that this made it hard for them to obtain sufficient non-contact time.
  • 70% of respondents believe that the SEN Code of Practice makes clear the role expected of a SENCO. A future SEN Code of Practice should therefore retain this clarity.
  • SENCOs identified excessive paperwork as a cause of SENCO workload and a barrier to meeting the needs of children and young people with SEN. The survey revealed a cohort of professionals working hard to develop inclusive practice in their schools.
  • SENCOs welcomed and wanted support from their local authority. They valued the role of local authority SEN experts and wanted advice and guidance about policy and practical intervention and assessment. SENCOs benefited from networking with other SENCOs where authorities facilitated such interaction.

METHODOLOGY

This report is based on the 187 responses to a survey carried out during November 2011.

During November 2011, an email inviting teachers to complete a SurveyMonkey survey was disseminated to 417 SENCOs. The NUT possesses contact details for 791 SENCO members but this includes email information for only 417.

The survey was also emailed to 500 NUT school representatives who were asked to forward the email to SENCO colleagues, whether or not the SENCO was an NUT member.

PART 1: BACKGROUND INFORMATION ABOUT RESPONDENTS AND THEIR SCHOOL

1.79% of respondents were from England, 15% were from London and 6% from Wales.

2.The respondents were largely in maintained schools, although 12% were in secondary Academies and 2% in primary Academies. Nearly one in ten of the SENCOs were in special schools, one quarter are working in secondary, a further one quarter arein primarysettings and 44% were in nursery/infant/junior settings.

Table (i): Type of school.

Nursery / 22 (12%)
Infant / 28 (16%)
Junior / 29 (16%)
Primary and Middle deemed primary / 45 (25%)
Secondary and Middle deemed secondary / 46 (26%)
Academies / 25 (14%)
Special / 16 (9%)
Pupil referral unit / 5 (3%)
Other / 9 (5%)

3.Just over half (52%) of respondents had between 201 and 999 full time equivalent(FTE) pupils in their schools, 27% had less than 200 FTE pupils and 21% had more than 1,000. The survey respondents were spread evenly across different size schools, therefore, with one quarter in small schools, another quarter in large schools and half in middle size settings.

  1. The overwhelming majority of respondents indicated that their school (96 per cent) maintains a special needs register.
  1. We asked whether SENCOs shared the responsibility. Nearly three-quarters of respondents (72%) did not share responsibility for SEN co-ordination with another member of staff. Within the third (28%) who did share the role, many spoke of assistant SENCOs or deputy SENCOs.
  1. Many schools have created specific structures, such as one school with a “Strategic Leader for Inclusion and Alternative Provision” who is a member of the SLT and line manager of the SENCO. SENCOs in special schools commented that they “share it with everyone”. Some SENCOs have phase SENCOs responsible for each phase. Some SENCOs job share the role.
  1. SENCOs described their workload, and the expectations on them, as excessive. Special educational needs co-ordinators display a deeply professional commitment to the pupils in the school with SEN. SENCOs work countless hours of unpaid overtime to ensure students’ needs are met.
  1. Over half of respondents (55%) identified that a lack of financial resources is the greatest obstacle to providing them with sufficient non-contact time. This is likely to become a greater barrier as funding is reduced and school budgets come under greater pressure in future years.
  1. The other consistent barrier identified was “other teaching commitments”. This was the greatest barrier for 45% of SENCOs. Within this group, some SENCOs chose to continue a teaching commitment, and in some schools it was appropriate for them to do so given the manageable demands on the SENCO and the number of pupils with SEN. However, for many within this 45%, the extent of their teaching commitments was undermining and restricting their ability to carry out the pivotal role of SENCO provision in their school.
  1. SENCOs who are also head teachers made the point that the head teacher role is constantly getting bigger and more unreasonable. The other consistent view was that there is too much paperwork and that the Common Assessment Framework has exacerbated this rather than providing a solution.
  1. It is a comment about the capacity of schools to progress on developing inclusive practice that 33% of SENCOs felt that their school’s priorities lie elsewhere and that this prioritisation made it hard for them to get sufficient non-contact time. This suggests that the priorities set for schools by national government and the ways in which schools are judged and measured is not encouraging or enabling heads to prioritise meeting the needs of pupils with SEN, or giving them the capacity to prioritise this.

PART 2–views about the SEN CODE OF PRACTICE

  1. 70% of respondentsbelieve the current SEN Code of Practice makes clear the role expected of a SENCO. 20% felt that the role in the Code is not clear, and 10% were uncertain. Overwhelmingly, SENCOs perceived that the SEN Code of Practice underpinned their role and many commented on regularly referring to the SEN Code of Practice to “get a fuller understanding of what is expected”.

13.Some of the SENCOs working in special schools commented that the SEN Code of Practice was not designed with special schools in mind.

14.Some SENCOs believed that the SEN Code of Practice is very prescriptive whilst others considered that the framework was capable of application to each context and to the resources available.

15.Some SENCOs felt strongly that their presence on the senior leadership team is essential to ensure that inclusion issues are considered as central to strategic planning and believed that an SEN champion on the SLT is not enough. Many expressed the view that in order for SEN co-ordination to be truly meaningful the SENCO should statutorily be a member of the SLT. Some SENCOs reported that they had “no dealings with money in the role at all”.

16.Many SENCOs pointed to a variety of practice between schools and believed the SEN Code of Practice is applied inconsistently. One SENCO reported that “the way the code is interpreted in my area is a minefield”.

17.A minority of SENCOs believed that the SEN Code of Practice is out of touch with current educational policy. Some SENCOs expressed the desire to have a greater role in accountability and to be able to support colleagues in mainstream lessons to make sure the needs of students with SEN are met.

18.One consistent thread was a perception among SENCOs that they end up spending too much time completing paperwork rather than supporting children. SENCOs believed they are given too many administrative tasks-such as exam concession and administration of exams, collation of reports for outside agencies and other paper-based roles that take the majority of SENCOs’ time. Many wanted the SENCO role to be more of an advisory and consultative role in relation to teaching and learning.

19.Many SENCOs identified that the existing SEN Code of Practice did not reflect the reality which was that much more time, in practice, is required for supporting and working with parents and with other agencies. The time needed to liaise with other agencies was thought to have increased over the period since the SEN Code of Practice came into effect.

20.SENCOs believed that they merit greater recognition of their professionalism.

21.Many of the SENCOs concluded that the role is an impossibly large role and called for a more “realistic” job description.

22.Some SENCOs considered the nature of children’s needs to have changed and argued that behaviour management issues were now predominantly the largest challenge for their school/colleagues.

PART 3 – AMOUNT OF external SUPPORT TO SCHOOL FROM LOCAL AUTHORITY

  1. Nearly three-quarters of respondents considered that over the last two years the amount of external support to the school had decreased. 11% felt that it had increased and 16% thought it had remained the same.
  1. SENCOs told us overwhelmingly that the amount of external support to the school is decreasing. We asked SENCOs what had happened to the amount of support external to the school for pupils at School Action and School Action Plus. 74% - nearly 3 in every 4 - told us that the amount of support had decreased over the last two years.

25.A pattern of reduced local authority capacity was described by three quarters of SENCOs. SENCOs highlighted that local authority re-organisations have reduced the level of support to schools resulting in:-

  • A rationing of educational psychology time, a decrease in their input and fewer school visits;
  • A switch in focus by support agencies to consulting with and advising the SENCO rather than meeting with, observing and assessing children;
  • Behaviour support being reduced (many SENCOs said this no longer exists or has been cut totally in local authority re-organisations);
  • A greater onus of schools to deliver specific interventions for which SENCOs feel they and/or colleagues are not trained;
  • Fewer visits from advisory teachers and longer referral processes;
  • Cut backs for pupils with ASD; and
  • Teachers who have already done all they can at School Action are left with nowhere to turn and feeling that they cannot offer appropriate interventions to the child.

26.SENCOs recounted closures of agencies and redundancies of support teachers. Many SENCOs spoke of restructuring of support services, staffing cuts in support services and withdrawal of support to schools. This was described by SENCOs as causing a sharp decrease in the amount of support to schools.

27.Speech and language therapy services were identified by SENCOs as one service which had been badly hit by funding cuts.

28.Some SENCOs reported being required to carry out assessments formerly carried out by advisory services or educational psychologists.

29.SENCOs identified that they are under greater demands to provide support internally because of the reduction in the amount ofexternal support to the school.

30.Some SENCOs identified specific gaps in provision in their area; a lack of specialist BESD provision in Gloucestershire;in Norfolk too few support agencies post-reorganisation to promote early intervention; in Suffolk, a re-organisation which was said to have significantly decreased input from educational psychologists and advisory teachers.

31.Many SENCOs reported that the increasing number of Academies had led to services locally being cut. Some SENCOs reported that all local schools now had to ‘buy in’ support but that not all schools were using traded services so classroom teachers could not access support for the pupils in their classroom with SEN. Comments included: -

“Academy status in the area has led to services locally being cut drastically.”

“Due to financial cut-backs & our recent Academy status many outside agencies are no longer available to us - either because we do not pay for them or because they have closed down - e.g. Connexions will no longer see non-statemented children.”

“No support for BESD or Literacy/SPLD students. We can get support for BESD if we pay into LA package as an academy.”

32.Overall, therefore, the picture described by SENCOs is one of decreased support for SENCOs, decreased support for classroom teachers, and decreased support for pupils with SEN. SENCOs argued that this prohibits early intervention, and that vital services which they wanted to access to support pupils were disappearing.

33.Many SENCOs provided detailed reports including the following:-

“Decreased hugely at the time that the number of pupils and variety severity of need has sky rocketed. No support for SLN (dyslexia) little Ed Psych hours, minimal support for HI or VI and recently huge cut backs for our ASD pupils too. We now also have a limited amount of people (barely anyone)- to go for support or advice on SEN issues at the LA- eg; statementing, annual reviews etc as they have all been made redundant. All our Specialist teachers and Ed Psych hours will cease of sept 2012 (I found out today) so we will have no external support from the LA for our pupils.”

“Earlier this year, the LA restructured in response to govt. cuts and two thirds of the specialist teachers took redundancy.”

“Very hard to get outside agency advice for as many children as need it.”

“Cuts to all services-very little access to support unless child is statemented.”

“Less Speech and Language Therapy. Long waits for children to be assessed for ASD. Unable to get statements unless a diagnosis of ASD- whereas previously had 100% success rates with requests now very few get through.”

“Sensory support Service for a boy profound hearing loss went from 4 hrs per week to 1.”

“EP no longer linked to each school instead a help line is available with specific times to phone. This is not always convenient when only in schools for two days.”

PART 4 - QUALITY OF EXTERNAL SUPPORT TO SCHOOLSFROM LOCAL AUTHORITY

34.Not only has the amount of external support to schools decreased in the majority of schools in the last two years. SENCOs report that the quality of external support has worsened too. Nearly half of SENCOs (47%) reported that they believe the quality has decreasedover the last two years. Nearly the same amount (45%) believed the quality has remained the same. In 8% of schools the quality of external support has increased.

35.Some SENCOs identified that it is challenging to get support for particular groups of children in their authority, such as pupils with MLD or SPLD.

36.Many SENCOs recognised that colleagues employed in educational psychologists services, and other support services, were working very hard in difficult circumstances and under the constant threat of redundancies. SENCOs appeared keen to make allowances and understood that the quality and quantity of support was reducing because of funding cuts. SENCOs were anxious about the loss of expertise arising from specialist teachers taking redundancies. Continuity of support was seen to be jeopardised by funding pressures.

37.Not a single SENCO articulated that they did not need support services. Many SENCOs provided written comments which recognised their value and argued for greater access, more continuity of support, a lower threshold for referrals and more advice about early intervention and specific interventions to meet needs.

“The Ed Psychs have too many schools to cover each, the Specialist teacher services have tried so hard to implement new strategies and services but then they get made redundant, the ones left are so stretched that pupils that were on their 'books' have now been discharged as their needs are no longer considered to be severe enough”