Trends in SEN identification: contexts, causes and consequences

• Published in: Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs
• Main Authors: Hutchinson, Jo, Timimi, Sami, McKay, Neil
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2021
• Subjects: sami
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1471-3802.12496; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1471-3802.12496; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full-xml/10.1111/1471-3802.12496

Summary This policy seminar addressed these current issues and questions: i. Are there shifts from an interactive to within‐child model of identification? And if so, what are the factors that are contributing to this? ii. What are the changing relationships between parents, schools and LAs and their influence on identification practice? And iii. What kind of identification and assessment framework do we need for the future? The first speaker Jo Hutchinson, from the Education Policy Institute, presented on ‘How fairly and effectively special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are identified?’ in which she summarised her interim findings about school attainment and inclusion questions. One of her key findings was that about four in ten children have some interaction with the SEND system over the course of their schooling. This is a lot more than the commonly held assumptions about SEN incidence (one in five or six). Further analysis indicated that factors that best predicted the identification of SEN Support in primary schools were measures of deprivation and prior attainment. There were moderate effects for absences, ethnicity, looked after child status and child in need status. Lesser but still significant factors were sex, months of birth, EAL status and school mobility. The communication language and literacy scale of the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile was the best predictor of being identified with SEND at the SEN Support level. Also, analysis showed that most of variation in SEN Support identification was predicted by school variations, indicating that individual effects were halved once school factors were taken into account. Analyses for secondary and SEN at the EHC Plan level were still be completed. Dr Sami Timimi, Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, presented on ‘ the social construction of autism’. In his presentation, he deconstructs the ‘common sense’ understanding of autism to argue that it is a construct that lacks a coherent basis in science and can result in therapeutically ...