What is SEND and what does SEND in education mean?

Whether you’re a parent or guardian, an early career teacher (ECT), looking to get into education, or just wanting to brush up on your knowledge surrounding SEND - we’re here to help you.

What is SEND? 

You may have seen some reference to 'SEND' and wondered what it means, well, SEND is short for ‘Special Educational Needs and Disabilities’ and is used by many educators to refer to special needs in education. If a child or young person (0-25 years old) has SEND, they may need more support than children of the same age to make the expected progress.

This could be because of a specific learning difficulty or disability affecting their ability to learn, such as a hearing impairment, sensory impairment or mental health difficulties, for example. They may require reasonable adjustments, targeted interventions or additional provisions to help support their learning outcomes.

In addition to affecting their ability to learn, SEND can also impact their behaviour, concentration levels, and their ability to make friends and socialise.  

Children and young people with SEND require special educational provision different to or additional to pupils in the mainstream educational system. These provisions are unique to the child or young person’s individual needs, they can be for a short term or long term - even for the full duration of their educational life, up to 25 years old. SEND covers a broad and diverse range of needs, for some children they can be more complex and visible than others.  

All teachers are responsible for supporting SEND. Support could be provided by the class teacher, Teaching Assistant (TA), SENCO (Special Educational Needs Coordinators) or external support services within an educational setting.

The Department of Education created the SEND Code of Practice, which is the statutory guidance on implementing SEND provisions, to help children and young people with SEND. This is based on the Equalities act 2010 and the Children and families act 2014, which is the legal foundation and where the enforceable rights come from that educators must abide by.

In the Send Code of Practice there are four broad areas of need and support.   

The four SEND areas identified are: 

• Cognition and Learning 
• Communication and Interaction  
• Physical and Sensory 
• Social, Emotional and Mental Health 

What types of special education needs and disabilities fall under these areas of support and cause greater difficulty in learning in school? 

The types of conditions that could cause learning difficulties are: 

• Autism 
• Dyslexia 
• ADHD 
• Dyspraxia 
• Development Disability  
• Speech, Language and Communications needs 
• Language processing disorder 
• Nonverbal learning disorder 
• Auditory processing disorder 
• Visual processing disorder 

If a child attends school and is not making the progress their peers are making, then the teacher can take steps to identify if they require additional SEND support.

How teachers could identify SEND in schools 

• Observations 
• Teacher & statutory assessments  
• Screenings  
• Performance against the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework or National curriculum  
• Input from external professionals (Speech & Language Therapy, Cognition & Learning Team) 

The SEND code of Practice emphasises identifying SEN as early as possible, as it gives the child or young person the best chance of succeeding in their day-to-day learning. However, this could take longer for some pupils in their educational journey.

If a child has SEND - what support can they receive?  

Outlined on the DfE’s website, they state that children can receive… 

Support for under 5’s includes: 

• A written progress check when your child is 2 years old 
• A health visitor carrying out a health check for your child if they’re aged 2 to 3 
• A written assessment in the summer term of your child’s first year of primary school 
• Making reasonable adjustments for disabled children, like providing aids like tactile signs 

Support for those between 5 and 15 includes: 

• A special learning programme 
• Extra help from a teacher or assistant 
• To work in a smaller group 
• Observation in class or at break      
• Help taking part in class activities 
• Extra encouragement in their learning, for example to ask questions or to try something they find difficult 
• Help communicating with other children 
• Support with physical or personal care difficulties, for example eating, getting around school safely or using the toilet 

Children and young adults could be put onto the SEN register at their school or nursery, allowing educational settings to record the children identified with SEND. They can then create a SEN support plan to help support learning outcomes. 

What does a SEN Support Plan involve? 

The SEN support plan sometimes called an Individual Educational Plan (IEP) has four stages; ‘Access – Plan – Do – Review’ and is seen as a ‘cycle’. This is often referred to as a ‘graduated approach’.  

Access – The level of need is identified by the teacher and SENCO. They then create a baseline assessment for which progress will be measured  

Plan - a plan is created for the additional support required, with outcomes and deadlines agreed on by parents/carers, SENCO and the teacher

Do – The teachers provide the support outlined in the plan 

Review – Regularly review the support and amend as needed. Schools should hold 3 review meetings with parents a year to review the child or young person's progress  

If they need additional support on top of this, an Education, Health and Care Plan (ECHP) can be requested.

What is an Education, Health and Care Plan? 

This is a legal document produced by the students’ school and local authority outlining the specific needs required for a child or young person with SEND and how services will work together to achieve the best outcomes. This plan is created with education, health, and care services, in addition to the class or subject teacher, SENCO and local authority.  

A parent, child or young person (over 16), school representative or other provider can request an EHCP assessment. The Department of Education put in a legal timeframe for how long the process should take, from requesting the assessment to receiving the plan, it should be no longer than 20 weeks.

What does SEND mean in Education? 

 Children or young people with SEND can stay in mainstream schools and have their needs catered for by their class teachers. This is because as outlined in the SEND code of practice, all teachers are teachers of SEND. All teaching staff are expected to provide Inclusive high-quality teaching differentiated to individual pupils.  

However, if a child has an EHC plan, and the local authority agrees a special school is the best way to support a child or young person, then the local authority can suggest a list of schools in the local area that could need the child or young person's needs.   

Special schools typically have smaller class sizes and bigger staff to pupil ratios. In England, there are a range of state funded special schools that specialise in certain educational needs. These typically align with one of the four board areas of SEND, outlined earlier:

• Cognition and Learning 
• Communication and Interaction  
• Physical and Sensory 
• Social, Emotional and Mental Health

How many people require SEND support in schools? 

In England, around 1.6 million school pupils have SEND, just over 1.2 million receive SEN support and 0.4 million have EHC Plans according to the Research Briefing from the House of Commons July 2024.  

The accredited official statistics compiled by the Department of Education identified that in the 2023/24 academic year the most common type of need for pupils with SEN support was speech, language and communication needs. For children or young people with an EHCP, the most common type of need is an autistic spectrum disorder.  

To get a snapshot of the SEND landscape in schools across the UK download our free Tes SEND Report 2024.