Delivering SEND Reform in partnership with schools: Leading with Head and Heart

IMPOWER’s recent Shared Learning Event with the Council for Disabled Children brought together over 70 SEND leaders from across the country. Chaired by Dame Christine Lenehan, it explored delivering SEND reform in partnership with schools, and why doing that well needs both head and heart. 

As a delivery partner for the DfE SEND and AP Change Programme, and through our work with local areas, IMPOWER supports systems to test reforms and strengthen inclusion.  

Paul Wagstaff, Luton’s Director of Education, described the partnership approach that had been developed and built upon Luton’s involvement in the Change Programme: “You can’t direct schools to be inclusive. You can’t direct them what to do. You’ve got to work through influence and persuasion.” 

Gillian Howard, Headteacher at Mountjoy School in Dorset, described how Valuing SEND helped children move from special school to local mainstream primaries. Her experience showed how evidence and sustained partnership can create opportunities for a more inclusive education. 

There were also examples of how IMPOWER’s Applied Analytics Practice can support the partnership between council’s and schools to use data insights and evidence to underpin an inclusive ambition and inform decisions about support. 

Using the IMPOWER INDEX to help set an inclusive ambition  

Shared analysis helps councils and schools agree their inclusion ambition and where practice needs to develop. 

IMPOWER’s Inclusion INDEX combines publicly available information on need, spending, EHCPs, mainstream inclusion, exclusions, suspensions, absence and attainment. Comparisons across areas help partners examine their strengths and priorities, but also set an ambition for what they could achieve in their area. 

The INDEX helps to get people across the partnership on the same page about what matters, what is working and what needs to change. Examining productivity and value for money, helps leaders to ask questions about whether scarce resources can be used better to improve inclusion and outcomes for children.  

Schools and families are pivotal in making sense of what sits behind those figures. Their experience helps turn the data into a fuller picture of what is happening locally and why. 

A visual heatmap to explore how need and provision align 

IMPOWER have developed interactive heatmaps which SEND leaders can use to gain a better understanding of SEND need, prevalence and capacity across their area. This highlights potential pressure, spare capacity and mismatches between support and need, informing discussions about where additional expertise or provision is needed. 

The map shows need and provision together, helping councils and schools see where they may want to look more closely. 

Understanding what support could improve children’s outcomes 

SEND Reforms mean that areas are developing their Experts at Hand offer to support mainstream inclusion. A challenge for many leaders is how to target this resource and expertise to have the impact where it is needed most. This requires a closer understanding of children’s needs and settings’ readiness to meet them. 

IMPOWER’s Valuing SEND platform brings together children’s needs, settings’ readiness and confidence in the home environment. These profiles help us see what an individual child needs, but also what might need to change or strengthen within the setting to support children as well, recognising that it may be a combination of both. 

Gill Howard explained how overlaying children’s needs and mainstream schools’ readiness profiles helped show that some pupils in her special school could have their needs net in a mainstream setting. The insight was evidence of the opportunity, but making this a reality meant changing hearts and minds too. It needed careful partnership working between schools, families and council teams for children to successfully move on. The most compelling part, though, were children’s own views, with one of them creating a video where they described how much they wanted to go to their local school. 

Looking at need and readiness together helps partners discuss support for the child, the setting or both. 

Turning insight into action with schools 

This is where the “heart” matters. Data and analytics cannot tell the whole story of a child, school or community. How partners explore it influences whether it builds shared understanding or defensiveness. 

Luton is developing SEND Partnership Coordinator roles to support and connect SENDCos. Paul described a three-year ambition: SENDCos increasingly working through challenges together, rather than routinely seeking external support as their first step. Building peer confidence sits alongside access to specialist expertise. 

Where the evidence supports a change, partners can agree what to test and how to assess its effect on children’s experiences and outcomes. 

IMPOWER works with both head and heart alongside local authorities, schools and families. Bringing together our cutting-edge Applied Analytics Practice with sector knowledge, support for delivery at the frontline, expertise in transformation, we are helping local areas deliver their ambitions for inclusion and SEND reform. 

To explore what our SEND and Inclusion analytics could show in your area, contact [email protected].