The vast majority of Sendcos are struggling to carry out administrative tasks in work hours due to “unsustainable” workloads, research shows.

The finding comes amid government plans to teach more pupils with special educational needs in mainstream schools, which experts warn could lead to Sendcos’ workload increasing further.

Just 6 per cent of Sendcos felt able to complete their administrative tasks during weekly working hours, according to data commissioned by Tes.

More than half responding to a Teacher Tapp survey in the first month of this academic year said they were already being forced to work outside of their normal hours.

Some 55 per cent said they had to work beyond their normal working hours to ensure that tasks were completed.

And another 39 per cent said they had to push tasks into the following week.

Sendcos’ workload pressures

There are widespread concerns that the role of Sendco is becoming dominated by administrative work, particularly around the production of, and annual reviews for, education, health and care plans (EHCPs).

Although the government’s forthcoming White Paper is expected to include reforms to make parents and pupils less reliant on EHCPs, there are now concerns that any national drive to make mainstream schools more inclusive could add to the burdens of an over-stretched Sendco workforce.

And experts warn that the current system has moved the sector to a position where too often a school’s Sendco is “the single point of success or failure” for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

James Bowen, assistant general secretary at the NAHT school leaders’ union, said Sendcos struggled to get their work done during normal working hours “not least because in most primary schools the Sendco will normally combine this role with being a teacher”.

“In an ideal world we would have a system where Sendcos could devote five days a week to this job, but the way the system is resourced does not support this,” he added.

“It is not that schools are under-investing in this area - we simply don’t have the funds to do it. Most schools would want to have a full-time Sendco if they were able to.”

Schools are waiting to hear from the government about its plans to reform the SEND system, but ministers have been clear that it will expect mainstream schools to do more to accommodate greater numbers of children with additional needs.

Mr Bowen said, in this context, “there would be a concern for Sendcos, who are already facing a huge workload, if the government’s inclusion focus ends up asking more of them”.

For some, the concerns go beyond workload, to whether the system is using Sendcos’ expertise in the best way.

Tied up with admin

Margaret Mulholland, SEND and inclusion specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders, told Tes that administrative tasks are not the best use of a Sendco’s time and expertise.

A similar concern was raised at the Labour Party’s annual conference last week, when experts questioned whether Sendos were being supported to make the most of their knowledge.

Speaking on a conference panel, Annamarie Hassall, CEO of the SEND charity Nasen, said: “We need to de-burden educational psychologists and Sendcos from the administrative aspect of their role so that they can be leaders of practice.”

The conference heard fears that educational psychologist recruitment is being hampered by the fact that the job is increasingly about carrying out assessments for EHCPs rather than supporting pupils or teachers.

And experts say this recruitment issue is a pressing one for Sendcos, too.

Amelie Thompson, assistant director of education for SEND and special provision at Greenshaw Learning Trust, said: “The tension between the time spent on administrative tasks and how much capacity Sendcos have to lead SEND strategically across the school, including working alongside teachers and other leaders to build capacity, confidence and competence within the system, is very real.

“A number of Sendcos share with me that they would like to spend a lot more time in class but are not able to do so as much as they would like due to statutory responsibilities that are often tied up in high levels of administration and bureaucracy.”

‘Never-ending list of tasks’

Ryan Purdy, national lead for SEND and alternative provision at Astrea Academy Trust, said this administrative burden “can keep Sendcos away from their vital work in classrooms and with children”.

“Whether it is filling in a referral form, responding to correspondence, making a request for additional funding or updating pupil records and individual documents, it can feel like there is a never-ending list of tasks to complete,” he added.

There has been a longstanding concern that paperwork is adding unnecessary workload to the lives of teachers. But for Sendcos the added pressure is that administrative work is often not peripheral to the job but an essential part of how the current SEND system works and how children are supported.

Nicole Dempsey, director of SEND and safeguarding at Dixons Academies Trust, which runs 17 schools in the North of England, said: “The Sendco role is certainly bureaucratic, but it is paperwork with purpose, and involves administrative tasks that require a high level of knowledge and expertise - for example, by knowing the child, the setting, the local landscape and the national framework and being able to apply that knowledge to ensure that the child gets what they need.”

While a lot of the work could be categorised as administrative, she said, “it is highly specialist and a core function of the Sendco role”. This work is carried out “often in the context of limited funding and resource, long delays and low shared understanding”, Ms Dempsey added.

Standardised EHCPs ‘could reduce burden’

Mr Purdy suggested that one way to reduce Sendcos’ burden would be to standardise the format of EHCPs, so that different councils aren’t working differently.

He also called for a “systemic streamlining of referral processes to enable children to access the whole range of external professional support that they need, when they need it”.

The previous government’s SEND and Alternative Provision Plan included a proposal to digitise and standardise EHCPs.

But the Labour government is now working on its own reforms and, as Tes revealed earlier this year, has been considering whether EHCPs are the “right vehicle” to use to deliver support for pupils with SEND.

Leaders ‘must share ownership of SEND’

Ms Dempsey suggested that the Sendco workload problem goes beyond the volume of administrative work.

The 2014 reforms that created EHCPs led to a system where in some schools it is possible for the Sendco to “become a single point of success or failure for the students with SEND”, she said.

“Sendco workload demands are unsustainable and this needs to be addressed. I just don’t think it can be achieved - or at least not significantly impacted - by tackling the ‘admin’ demands,” she added.

“For me, a significant underlying cause of the demand on Sendcos is the lack of shared knowledge and distributed ownership across all staff within a school, but particularly the leadership.”

Ms Dempsey suggested that ensuring that school staff have a shared understanding and ownership of SEND is part of the answer.

“Whether we are talking about the current SEND system or a future one - and change is likely to put more responsibility on mainstream schools to meet a broad range of need - the space in which we have agency and opportunity is in the sharing and distributing of understanding and ownership,” she said.

Evie Semmens, director of inclusion at Learning Academy Partnership, which runs 18 academies in the South West, said Sendcos had to be “empowered as agents of change”.

The trust was rolling out dedicated CPD for Sendcos, “ensuring they are equipped to lead effectively within their settings and across the trust”, and has held a conference devoted to SEND, which included other trusts sharing best practice and recent research.

Ms Mulholland agreed that ownership of SEND needs to be shared. This “helps to ensure everyone knows their children well and are part of planning for their success at a classroom and a whole-school level”, she said.

Mandatory SEND qualifications

As part of a solution to this problem, a recent Commons Education Select Committee report, Solving the SEND Crisis, suggested that all new headteachers should be required to have a qualification in SEND.

When challenged on this by heads recently at the Labour Party conference, committee chair Helen Hayes said the qualification was needed because some schools in the system were not making inclusive decisions.

Commenting on today’s Teacher Tapp data, Ms Hayes said: “Too often our inquiry heard that the responsibility for SEND provision is disproportionately shouldered by a school’s Sendco, with not all senior leadership teams being sufficiently engaged in efforts to make their school genuinely inclusive.”

She said that reforms to the system should involve upskilling all school staff, including senior leaders, to understand and manage the needs of pupils and their families.

“This would take weight off Sendcos, make their workloads more sustainable, and help them to feel valued and their vital work properly understood.”

The Department for Education has been contacted for comment.

You can now get the UK’s most-trusted source of education news in a mobile app. Get Tes magazine on iOS and on Android