Nasen review

Michael Surr

Education Development Officer, Nasen

Michael’s background is in primary education both in the UK and abroad.  He has worked as a class teacher, SENCo and Deputy Head. Since beginning his career in education he has had a keen interest in SEN, ICT and equalities issues.

From 2008 Michael worked for a Local Authority as part of the leadership team of a SEND advisory service which gave him the opportunity to broaden his experience in to Early Years and Secondary. This role involved working with schools and settings to help them develop their provision for children and young people with SEN in general, and those with learning and cognition difficulties in particular.

One of the projects that Michael led was the development of a pathway for the identification of dyslexia which is now used by schools across Birmingham.
 

Introduction

Provision Map, is an online provision mapping tool which allows you to record, in one place, the special ‘additional to and different from’ provision, as described in the SEND Code of Practice, that is made for the children and young people in your setting.

There is more to it than this though, as it also provides a means of target setting and recording the reviews and evaluations of the success of these targets.

Simple to use, Provision Map is a comprehensive tool which enables you to map and manage provision effectively and efficiently.
 

General principles of provision mapping

Schools and other education settings are expected to meet the needs of all their pupils, including those with special or additional needs and disabilities. This additional provision should be recorded accurately in order to provide evidence of the support that has been put in place, especially for SEN Support, and to inform regular conversations with parents.

In order to ensure that this happens, an efficient system of provision mapping and provision management should be in place.

An effective provision map should record targets, the provision that is being used to meet them and the outcomes of this provision. Comprehensive maps will also include the cost of interventions along with which staff that are used to deliver them, the duration of each session, group size and period over which an intervention will run. All of this information should be easy to access and use by all stakeholders.

The map works alongside your process of provision management as it this that determines the review cycle, when and how often provision should be evaluated and the questions which need to be asked when analysing information held in the map; this analysis should also include looking at cost effectiveness.

In short, a provision map is the means by which you record the management activity around provision; the two elements work together.

Provision Map supports you to create a provision map that puts all the information you need in one place and being web-based can be accessed from any computer or tablet that is linked to the internet. This ease of access means that class teachers, support staff and senior leaders can be given their own accounts and parents can also be given their own access code; different levels of access can be granted to ensure that only the information needed by each user is available to them. This means that everyone is able to keep up to date with what is happening for an individual pupil, a year group or even the whole school.

In addition to the map itself, Provision Map facilitates your system of provision management as all of the information can be sorted and filtered so that you are only presented with what you need for a given purpose. This information can be exported as a spreadsheet for further analysis.

The SENCO role is multifaceted and, since the introduction of the current Code of Practice in 2015, is increasingly strategic. When I was a SENCo, one of my biggest headaches was keeping track of all the paperwork, review dates, assessment and other data. Although these things are important, they are a result of the job not the purpose of it. Therefore, for me, it was essential that I developed a system that would allow me to keep track of everything. Provision Map would have helped me to do this.
 

Getting started

Producing a provision map can seem very daunting, especially if the setting is quite large.

If you are about to start one for the first time, it might make sense to begin with a particular year group or type of need as this will make the task of setting up the map more manageable. Over time, it can then be expanded. Provision Map makes this process easier by allowing you to import basic pupil information e.g. names, dates of birth UPNs and so on, from the information management system used by the school. As well as this basic information, you can include details about free school meals, LAC, medical needs and so on. You can even upload documents, such as reports for example, which can be kept confidential if needs be.

Another place to start is with the provision itself. Provision Map comes with a comprehensive, prepopulated library of interventions which are organised according to the 4 broad areas of need described in the SEND Code of Practice. In addition to this, each intervention is ‘ranked’ as wave 1, 2 or 3. Both of these features make it very straightforward to identify what is needed. Staff can be assigned to interventions along with the number of sessions and even costs.

The best feature however is that the provision library can be edited. This means that interventions not in use in your setting can be removed and those that are in place, or that have been identified as being needed, can be added. This of course includes non-academic provision too.

Once the information for your setting has been set-up in Provision Map you can then begin to set targets.
 

Target Setting

Target setting in Provision Map is very straight forward. As is the case for interventions, there is a prepopulated library of targets which includes success criteria, strategies and provision; again these are organised according to area of need. As well as being able to edit targets, to ensure that they are personalised to the pupils and needs in your setting, you can also start from scratch to add your own.

As SEN provision is ‘additional to and different from’ that which would normally be made, it is important to be specific about what the provision, support or intervention involves. Provision Map provides plenty of space to allow you to do this. Not only will this mean you have a comprehensive record of what is available in your setting you can also track the journey of provision for individual and groups of pupils. In addition, support staff that have been assigned to deliver an intervention, as long as they have been given access to Provision Map, will be able to see exactly what it is they have to do.

Where teachers and other staff are responsible for setting targets, it is important that they know the range of provision that is available for different needs and also what potential suitable targets are. The provision and target libraries within Provision Map ensure that this is the case. The libraries will also help you to identify are gaps in provision or areas where there is an over concentration of provision.

As well as storing targets and the associated provision in Provision Map, you can also print out these records. The program offers the facility to print out pupil profiles which can be shared with parents as well as the pupils themselves.
 

Cost

I mentioned earlier that an effective provision map should include costs. As the strategic lead for SEND, the SENCo needs this information in order to ensure that the SEND budget is being used efficiently to achieve the best possible outcomes. When setting up targets and provision, Provision Map allows you to add costing information for not only resources that have been bought in but also for the cost of staff involved. Such specific information is a powerful tool should you need to submit evaluation reports or even to request more money or that a particular intervention should be allowed to continue.

Aside from the two examples above, ensuring value for money regarding provision helps the budget to go as far as possible. For example, if two interventions being used in your setting, both address the same needs, achieve similar outcomes but one is cheaper to implement than the other, then it would seem to be an obvious decision to make more use of the less expensive intervention.
 

Evaluation

As well as making provision, it is essential, as part of the provision management process, that evaluation of the provision takes place. This includes checking effectiveness and where it hasn’t been effective, asking why. Even if an intervention has been effective has it been effective enough? Did it give the outcomes that you hoped for?

One of the features of Provision Map that helps you to do this, is the ability to define a rating scale for intervention. i.e. a score of 0 could mean ‘expected progress’, 1 would be ‘more than expected’ progress and -1 would be ‘less than expected’. When the information is exported into a spreadsheet, it is easy, by filtering, to see which interventions are consistently effective, which individuals and groups of pupils do and don’t make progress and so on.

As we all know, it is important to use evidence-based interventions. Using the information from Provision Map, described above, you will be able to build up a database of effective interventions that have been developed in your own setting as well as those that have been bought in.

Part of the evaluation process includes formal reviews of targets and progress. These can be recorded in Provision Map, including pupil and parent voice, which means that all records are kept in one place.

Provision Map provides you with a comprehensive means of recording provision and interventions in your setting but also individual targets, reviews and any associated paperwork. The fact that it can be accessed anywhere by whomever you choose, means that it is easy to incorporate into your current system of provision management facilitating analysis of the effectiveness of provision.

This combination of the practical and strategic, makes Provision Map a powerful tool for SENCos and Inclusion Leaders.