We are on a curve of change in the way in which special educational needs are identified and supported in England, following the SEND reforms in 2014, part of the new Children and Families Act. For early years settings, these changes have mostly led to new and improved ways of working, but they have also presented some new challenges and caused some existing ones to be re-examined under the lens of the new reforms.
A long-awaited revolution
The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) sets the standards for all early years providers and promotes equality of opportunity and anti-discriminatory practice, ensuring that every child is included and supported. It is fair to say, however, that this has not always been as embedded as fully as it should be across all provision.
Before the reforms, early years settings worked on a system of ‘Early Years Action’ and ‘Early Years Action Plus’, and many settings had an expectation that ‘Action’ in Early Years Action and Early Years Action Plus meant extra staff or one-to-one support. This is a very costly approach and meant that, in some cases, a significant amount of time and effort went into gathering evidence that the child’s needs were severe enough to warrant them being categorised in the ‘Action Plus’ category, which then attracted funding.
Not only is this costly and time consuming, it led to frustration, as many settings felt that they were being asked to stretch their already limited resources to prove their case. The deficit nature of this model meant that if their applications were unsuccessful, they began to question whether they had the capacity to meet the needs of children with SEND, leading to a culture of reluctance to accept them in the setting. Moreover, by focusing on what the child could not do, it sometimes led to a culture where meeting the needs of the child and supporting them to develop became of secondary importance to being able to prove the existence of the special educational need; this often led to low aspirations for the child.
The Ofsted review into SEND in 2010 backed this up. It said: ‘In local areas where the formula for funding took into account the proportions of children identified as having special educational needs, this gave an obvious motivation to identify more such children.’1
This was also backed up in the report from Contact a Family, which showed that 25 per cent of parents surveyed stated that their child was refused a place because of their disability or special educational need, and 28 per cent did not think provision was inclusive or supported their child to participate in activities alongside their peers.2