Rethinking special educational needs

This project examined how special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) emerge, cluster, and change from early childhood to adolescence.  

Methodology

The team analysed longitudinal data from approximately 50,000 children and young people who took part in one of four research studies: the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children; the British Cohort Study; the Millennium Cohort Study; and the Twins Early Development Study.  

They mapped which needs commonly occur and identified groups of children and young people who share similar clusters of need. They also used genetic data from parents and children to understand how genetic and environmental influences affect development.  

Consultations with children and young people with SEND, their parents, and education professionals, helped shape the project. 

Key findings 

The analysis showed that children and young people’s needs manifest across three interconnected areas of development: 1) cognition and language, 2) social functioning, and 3) emotional functioning (which becomes distinct from social functioning in adolescence).  

Needs in one area of development are especially likely to co-occur with other needs in that same area of development, although needs commonly occur across areas too. 

In the early years, children’s skills can shift rapidly, as their development is highly malleable and shaped by their environments and experiences. By primary school, children’s strengths and challenges are typically more clearly expressed, and by adolescence social and emotional functioning become more independent of each other. 

Children and young people’s needs form clusters that do not map on to existing diagnostic (e.g. ‘autism spectrum disorder’) or educational (e.g. ‘specific learning difficulty’) labels. This means that some children and young people struggle in education despite not meeting any SEND diagnostic criteria.

Policy and Practice Recommendations 

• The policy that requires schools to record a child’s primary and secondary SEND type should be replaced by a requirement for every child and young person to have a full profile of needs. 

• When a child or young person is identified as having a SEND, the school should work on the assumption that they are likely to experience other needs within the same area of development. 

• Screening for a broad range of needs should be undertaken at the beginning of, and again partway through, primary school. Screening for social and emotional needs specifically should be undertaken around the beginning of secondary school. 

• Access to support should be needs-based and not dependent on diagnostic assessments, whatever the level of need.