Alice’s SEND seemed to have disappeared. At her previous school, situated in a tiny village, she had been on the special educational needs and disability register for two years, under the category of “cognition and learning”. But at her new school - a large academy based in one of the top 10 per cent of deprived neighbourhoods in the country, and where the proportion of disadvantaged children is well above average - her mother was told that she would not be placed on the register. Based on assessments, she was no longer deemed to have SEND.

Where had Alice’s SEND gone? Had it miraculously disappeared? Unfortunately not. She had simply been classified differently. In one school, she met the criteria for SEND. In the other, she did not.

It sounds bizarre, but this is not an isolated case. In my experience, this is a systemic problem in education.

In September 2014, the policy and provision for special educational needs was significantly reformed with the introduction of the SEND code of practice. As a current head of school and having been a SEND coordinator (Sendco) for the past 14 years, I have no doubt that this was a turning point in terms of attitudes, provision and policy.

However, in practice, there are still some issues regarding the implementation and interpretation of the guidelines, and it can be argued that, four years on, the changes and additions to the code of practice have not always had the desired impact.

According to the 2014 code of practice, a pupil has SEND “where their learning difficulty or disability calls for special educational provision, namely provision different from, or additional to, that normally available to pupils of the same age” (page 94).

This definition is very wide and ambiguous and, naturally, schools have interpreted it in different ways. This can be heavily influenced by the context of the school.

Endless interpretations

Some schools interpret SEND as applying only to children with a medical diagnosis. Others interpret it as applying to children who have external professional support. Some base it on how far behind their peers children are working. Others base it on how much one-to-one support a child needs to make progress. I could spend the rest of this article giving you hundreds of interpretations.

There are even different classifications within the family of schools where I work (which includes 14 primaries within a geographical area in Nottinghamshire).

A small, village school in an affluent area had a child on their SEND register because they were undergoing speech and language therapy. However, in my school (which is large and in one of the most deprived areas in the county), if I placed all the children who had a speech therapy intervention on the register, approximately 35 per cent of our foundation unit would be classed as SEND.

Another example: we might have a child who has been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), who presents with very challenging behaviour at home but is very settled in school (not requiring any extra provision). They would not be placed on the SEND register.

This is because our interpretation is that SEND is measured by the amount of provision needed for a child to make progress. Other schools would automatically place a child on the register just because they had a medical diagnosis, regardless of how much support they required at school.

Labels vs provision

Key to the matter is a conflict between the notion of a medical label, behaviour and the provision required to meet needs. But does it matter that schools have different interpretations of what SEND is? Shouldn’t this be decided in a way that is appropriate to individual schools and their pupils?

The challenge this presents is that schools are measured on progress and attainment data. Ofsted looks at vulnerable groups (including SEND), and if their progress data is poor, then this becomes a possible line of enquiry. But how can this be a fair and consistent measure if children are being identified as having SEND under different criteria in different schools?

Ofsted also looks at the proportion of pupils with SEND and will delve deeper if the percentage is significantly below or above the national average. If it is too low, then schools could be criticised for under-identifying. If it is too high, this could lead to scrutiny of possible over-identification. This highlights why it is important for schools to have consistent identification methods.

There have been many occasions when children have arrived at our school with a SEND classification but, based on further assessment, were not found to meet our criteria. Likewise, pupils have arrived who clearly met the criteria, but whose parents were not aware that their child had SEND. Both scenarios lead to awkward conversations with parents, which does not support a positive start at a new school.

Levelled down

Another major change in the 2014 code of practice was to the SEND register’s two levels. There used to be “school action” (the lower stage, which was supported within school) and “school action plus” (the higher stage, which required external professional involvement). These two levels were turned into one, named “school support”.

The merger led to the impression that there were more children with SEND on schools’ books at a time when there was increasing publicity about “over-identification” of SEND. Schools therefore increased their overall thresholds for what constituted a child having SEND. This, in turn, resulted in reducing numbers of children on SEND registers. Department for Education figures show that, in 2014, children with SEND made up 17.9 per cent of pupils in all schools. Figures from January 2018 indicate that this proportion is now 14.6 per cent.

I wanted to explore where the children had gone who might previously have been in the “school action” category. After some investigation, I found that the code of practice coincided with lots of schools (including mine) introducing “vulnerable registers”, which ran alongside the SEND register.

Children who were mildly dyslexic might no longer be classed as SEND, as their difficulties didn’t impact on their development in a profound way. However, they were still considered to be “vulnerable” so would be placed on the vulnerable register. These pupils had not disappeared, then; many of them had just transferred on to another register with a different title. This means that there is essentially a shadow SEND network, without the recognition and therefore without the same accountability.

So what can we do? I think there are lessons to be learned from Scotland. The 2017 additional support for learning policy for Scotland offers a list of reasons why the need for additional support might be identified, including issues such as “interrupted learners”, “have a learning disability” or “being bullied”. But it also makes reference to children at the opposite end of the spectrum, such as those who “are particularly able or talented”.

In the Scottish system, they do not use the terminology “special educational needs” and instead refer to children who require “additional support for learning”, which could be said to be more representative and less negative terminology.

These pupils are then grouped according to the potential barriers in their approaches to learning, support from personnel and provision of resources. The focus is based on provision meeting a child’s needs, rather than what is wrong, and this is not just limited to children with SEND.

Communicating criteria

A fundamental change to policy is not going to happen any time soon - it took 13 years for the original 2001 code of practice to be revised. In the meantime, it is important that school Sendcos overcome these issues by communicating with each other through geographical networks to create fair and consistent criteria for SEND identification. The same could also be done within multi-academy trusts. As a result, identification of SEND would be more consistent at schools in the same area.

In addition, Ofsted needs to see SEND in schools not just as a number or percentage. It should explore how children with SEND have been identified, and if schools have their own criteria or whether these have been established through collaboration. This would give the inspectorate a better understanding of and insight into a school’s SEND data before it made a judgement.

We should also endorse the use of vulnerable registers and vulnerable pupil profiles and passports. These recognise that children can be vulnerable in lots of different ways. They can also ensure that the children who might previously been classed as having SEND do not get lost in the system. Sometimes a child might not fit neatly into a criterion box. They might not have a medical diagnosis, receive the pupil premium or have SEND, but their characteristics may be such that we just think they are vulnerable. Sometimes it is just a feeling, but such pupils shouldn’t be overlooked.

Louise Connolly is head of school at the Sir Donald Bailey Academy in Nottinghamshire