Effective and Efficient Allocation of Resources Is your SEN provision good value for money?

Provision Management What’s Involved? Step 1: Audit the projected need for each year group within the school. Step 2: Capture your current provision. Step 3: Compare projected need (Step 1) with current pattern of provision (Step 2) and identify ‘gaps’ Step 4: Consider the research evidence on what works Step 5: Plan and cost your provision, including identified gaps and prioritise additional provision to the available resources Step 6: Evaluate the impact of provision through student outcomes Step 7: Evaluate the effectiveness of provision and establish ‘value for money’ judgements Step 8: Review the provision map

SEND Code of Practice The SENCO, headteacher and governing body should establish a clear picture of the resources that are available to the school. They should consider their strategic approach to meeting SEN in the context of the total resources available, including any resources targeted at particular groups, such as the pupil premium. Section 6.97

The allocation of resources Strategic Planning How much have you got to spend? What should you spend it on? What are your priorities for the year? Utilise a form of strategic planning to map out how you intend to allocate your resources for the year and cost your planned special provision Evaluate the impact of your special provision to and make judgements relating to effectiveness and value for money.

How much have you got to spend?

Overview: Reform of high needs funding Element 1: Core education funding Element 2: Additional support funding Element 3: Top-up funding Mainstream settings Pre-16 SEN and AP Specialist settingsAll settings Post-16 SEN and LDD “Top-up” funding from the commissioner to meet the needs of each pupil or student placed in the institution Mainstream per-pupil funding (AWPU) (2.5%) Contribution of £6,000 to additional support required by a pupil with high needs, from the notional SEN budget (1:75) Base funding of £10,000 for SEN and £8,000 for AP placements, which is roughly equivalent to the level up to which a mainstream provider would have contributed to the additional support provision of a high needs pupil. Base funding is provided on the basis of planned places. Mainstream per-student funding (as calculated by the national funding system) Contribution of £6,000 to additional support required by a student with high needs This diagram appeared as Figure 1 (p.43) of School funding reform: Next steps towards a fairer system.

Gloucestershire Notional SEN Budgets Formula used to determine schools’ notional SEN Budgets is !00% prior attainment factors: Primary – based on Early Years Foundation Profile Secondary – Based on KS2 English or maths score below Level 4. Plus 2.5% of school’s AWPU funding.

Fairer Schools Funding Changes Changes overall being introduced in No substantial change to High Needs Funding for due to insufficient evidence. Problem is that there is wide variation between different LAs in terms of how much is spent on high needs pupils and how high needs pupils are identified. Research being undertaken to inform future changes – hope to have conclusions by Spring 2015.

Other Funding Pupil Premium Additional funding to raise the attainment of disadvantaged pupils and close the gap between them and their peers – 2015 : £1,300 for primary-aged pupils £935 for secondary-aged pupils £1,900 for each looked-after pupil

Pupil Premium Funding can be used to provide a wide range of support, teaching approaches and interventions to improve the attainment of disadvantaged children. Education Endowment Foundation Toolkit summarises the educational research about the effectiveness and value for money of a range of approaches – schools are encouraged to use this information to inform their allocation of resources.

Disadvantage/SEND Pupils who receive FSM or who are looked after are more likely to have SEND. Therefore a significant number of pupils receiving pupil premium are likely to have SEND. It makes sense to combine funding for SEND and pupil premium for those children in terms of their expected outcomes and the action taken to increase progress and achievement. This will, by definition contribute to ‘narrowing the gap’.

The Pupil Premium: How schools are spending the funding successfully to maximise achievement Characteristics of schools that spent PPF successfully, included: Understanding the importance of quality first teaching rather than relying on intervention to compensate for teaching that is less than good. Using achievement data frequently to check whether interventions were working and made adjustments accordingly, rather than just using the data retrospectively to see if something had worked.

The Pupil Premium: How schools are spending the funding successfully to maximise achievement Allocating their best teachers to teach interventions or employed new teachers who had good track records in raising achievement. Making sure that teaching assistants were highly trained and understood their role in helping pupils to achieve. Being able, through careful monitoring and evaluation, to demonstrate the impact of every aspect of their spending on pupils’ outcomes.

The Pupil Premium: How schools are spending the funding successfully to maximise achievement Characteristics of schools that spent PPF less successfully, included: Having a lack of clarity about the intended impact of the spending. Spending the funding indiscriminately on teaching assistants Not monitoring the quality and impact of interventions well enough Planning their Pupil Premium spending in isolation to their other planning.

Best practice example Primary school/area of high economic deprivation. Four fifths of pupils are eligible for PP. Following reading the Sutton Trust report, the HT reflected on the role of teaching assistants in the school. He realised they were not being maximised to support learning. He extended the TAs’ hours using PPF to enable them to jointly plan and review pupils’ learning with teachers. He undertook a skills audit and put in place a range of individualised training.

Best Practice Example Large primary school with low proportion of eligible pupils. Used some PPF to part-fund a nurture group for a small number of pupils, including those eligible for the PP. All pupils had been identified as underachieving because of social, emotional or behavioural reasons.

Best Practice Example Group was led by a qualified teacher and two teaching assistants. The aim was to improve pupils’ behaviour and social and learning skills to give them confidence to engage fully in whole-class work. There was also a clear plan to improve achievement in reading and writing. Ofsted, 2013

How are you going to spend it?

Who are you going to spend it on?

Special Educational Needs A child or young person has SEN if they have a learning difficulty or disability which calls for special educational provision to be made for him or her. A child of compulsory school age or a young person has a learning difficulty or disability if he or she: has a significantly greater difficulty in learning than the majority of others of the same age

SEN or Underachievement? Inspectors saw schools that identified pupils as having special educational needs when, in fact, their needs were no different from those of most other pupils. They were underachieving but this was sometimes simply because the school’s mainstream teaching provision was not good enough, and expectations of the pupils were too low.

Expertise in SEN In just over half the providers visited, staff had good or outstanding expertise in special educational needs which meant that their assessment of needs was more secure. The best staff were also clear about their limitations and how to gain access to higher-level specialists when needed. The best practice distinguished clearly between pupils who were underachieving because of weaknesses in provision and those whose particular special educational needs were hampering their learning.

Recommendation Schools should stop identifying pupils as having special educational needs when they simply need better teaching and pastoral support. „ When a child or young person is underachieving, the school or setting should begin by analysing the effectiveness of its generic teaching and systems for support before deciding that she or he has special educational needs.

What provision should you be funding?

Special Educational Provision Special educational provision is educational or training provision that is additional to or different from that made generally for other children or young people of the same age by mainstream schools, maintained nursery schools, mainstream post-16 institutions or by relevant early years providers.

Is it really ‘additional to’ or ‘different from’? The Code of Practice states that when pupils are identified as having special educational needs, they should receive ‘interventions that are additional to or different from those provided as part of the school’s usual differentiated curriculum offer and strategies’. However, nearly one fifth of the schools visited suggested that they provided many interventions that could be considered ‘additional’ and ‘different’ when, in other schools, such provision was regarded as the norm.

What special provision do you need?

Audit of Need Concentrate on auditing need for different types of intervention. How many children need a small group literacy or numeracy intervention led by a TA who has received training and is supervised by a qualified teacher? How many children need 1:1 literacy or numeracy interventions from a specialist teacher?

Consider the research evidence on what works The school will have evidence from its own on-going tracking of progress to consider the effectiveness of its own provisions. There is a growing body of research about ‘what works’ for pupils with SEN and disabilities: When considering what special provision they need the school should draw on this research.

Plan and cost your provision Plan provision:  Type  Amount,  Frequency  Responsible staff  Expected outcomes Cost provision:  Accountability not accounting

Evaluate the impact of provision through student outcomes Set expected outcomes for all ‘additional to’ and ‘different from’ provision Baseline all pupils at the beginning of interventions and re-assess at the end Make decisions on next steps for individual pupils on the basis of their outcomes.

Is it good value for money? If it achieves the expected outcomes then you can conclude that it is good value for money. Comparisons of the cost of different interventions are dangerous! AcceleRead – low cost – designed for pupils with low-level reading difficulties 5 hours of 1:1 tutoring from a specialist dyslexia teacher – high cost – designed for pupils with severe dyslexia.