Special educational needs and disability (SEND) provision is in crisis: there’s not enough funding or resources to meet rising demand. And, without any immediate answers from the government, following the SEND review, more schools are setting up resource provisions (RPs) to cope with the situation.
RPs are specialist classes within mainstream schools that cater for a particular profile of need. They are commonly used for children with social, emotional and mental health needs (SEMH) and autism spectrum conditions (ASC).
They can be brilliant assets, but I worry that RPs are, in some cases, being approached as a “fix all” for pupils who are struggling to attend school or individual lessons, often due to acute anxiety.
In the hands of a fantastic Sendco, who runs a skilful and knowledgeable team, an RP can provide a safe, inclusive space, improve access to the curriculum and deepen expertise among key staff. At worst, however, they can become little more than an exclusion zone.
In particular, there are two possible negative consequences. The first is that pupils experience, as Rob Webster puts it in his book The Inclusion Illusion, detrimental “separation and segregation” effects. The second is that staff outside of the RP assume that their levels of knowledge and confidence with SEND don’t need to change; the better the “specialists”, the greater the risk that other staff feel less empowered. This can also place unreasonable expectations on the Sendco or teaching assistants.
So, how do we avoid these consequences?
Resource provisions: how to get them right
RPs work best as part of an inclusive ecosystem, driven by strong leadership. This can be gauged by how well pupils thrive and belong, not just in the RP but in the wider life of the school. Governing bodies can play a role in monitoring this.
One key question for leaders is: how does the RP remove barriers to learning and engagement? Ideally, the relationship between the RP and the rest of the school should feed into school improvement plan targets - because, ultimately, the goal of the RP is to make access to the rest of the school possible.
Leaders should also identify senior and middle leaders who can have explicit accountability for the successful inclusion of children through RP. It’s important to grow knowledge and capacity throughout the school and to constantly review how well this is being used. Student and parent voice can be a good indicator here, as can speaking directly to teachers and support staff about what is and isn’t working.
Another good practice is to collaborate with primary feeder schools and local specialist provision on the development of the RP and how it feeds into wider inclusive practice.
One SEMH provision for young people in Hampshire offers an example of how this can work well. At this school, where a pupil was feeling confident about a lesson, the level of support would be low. Where a pupil found that a subject regularly caused them anxiety, a member of specialist staff would be assigned to support the pupil for key parts, or the whole, of that lesson. Where a pupil communicated anxiety within a lesson, a member of staff would attend to help refocus the pupil on the task or offer them alternative ways to approach the lesson objective.
This is a refreshingly agile way to maximise stretched resources - and it is easy to see how RP staff in other schools could follow a similar approach.
In order for RP to succeed, every system and policy within the school has to be able to flex. Initially, this will take trial and error and inconvenient adjustments, but once the right scaffolding is in place, it should be much easier to find models for collaboration and to regularly review how RPs can work more effectively.
School leaders are already stretched, so I hesitate to be delivering yet more advice. But without support from the government on SEND, schools have little choice but to find their own ways to ease the pressure.
Margaret Mulholland is the special educational needs and inclusion specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders
