During this period of lockdown, there has rightly been concern over how the nation’s children will maintain educational progress while completing their school work remotely. 

Robert Halfon, chair of the Commons Education Select Committee, told fellow MPs that about 700,000 children were not doing school work and did not have proper access to computers or the internet.

Of these children, some will be those recognised as economically disadvantaged; others will be those with special educational needs for whom school may be a struggle at the best of times.

In this current worst of times, though, the attainment gap between those who are able to engage in education and those who are not will continue to widen. 

SEND funding in crisis

The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), in the introduction to its most recent Guidance Report on Special Educational Needs in Mainstream Schools, notes that the “attainment gap between pupils with SEND and their peers is twice as big as the gap between pupils eligible for free school meals and their peers. However, pupils with SEND are also more than twice as likely to be eligible for free school meals.” 

To give this some perspective, official government figures tell us that 390,100 children and young people had Education, Health and Care (EHC) plans as of January 2020.

The total number of children with SEND stands at 1.32 million, which is 14.9 per cent of the school population, based on the latest figures.  

So of the total SEND children, almost a third are also eligible for free school meals as they are both academically and economically disadvantaged.

For children who are economically disadvantaged, there is a laudable Pupil Premium fund that allows schools to spend this extra money to close the attainment gap between those who are economically disadvantaged and their non-disadvantaged peers.

This has been working slowly over the past decade.

The case is not so rosy for SEND children. It has been widely and accurately reported that special needs funding and provision is in crisis. 

There is not enough money in the system to provide appropriate support for children when they need it. Then coronavirus hit.

The impact of the coronavirus

In the early weeks of the lockdown, the government relaxed rules around provision because it recognised that it was impossible for schools to continue to meet all needs when children weren’t able to attend. 

Instead, Sendcos were told they had to use “reasonable endeavour” to fulfil the demands of the EHCP.

This has meant substituting one-to-one support in the classroom with differentiated work to complete at home with the support of an adult on the telephone. 

Alternatively, instead of a speech and language therapist, autism support worker or other outreach professional coming into school to work with a child, pupils might be sent worksheets to practice at home instead. 

So, “reasonable endeavour” means we do our best under the current circumstances. Nobody could argue this is ideal, and unfortunately for a large number of children, the effects of the lockdown will mean the attainment gap grows wider.

What can we do about it?

This issue is not going unnoticed. The EEF and the Sutton Trust social mobility charity contributed to the Commons Education Select Committee remote meeting on 3 June.  

They have cautioned the government that any response to closing the gap between SEND and non-SEND children must be attentive to individual needs, and have recommended we move towards a minimum common standard for catch-up. 

Anybody working within the realm of special education will know that the SEND Code of Practice outlines four areas of need: communication and interaction; cognition and learning; social, emotional and mental health; and sensory and/or physical needs. 

Within each of these areas, there is a significant variation of the needs of pupils. 

As such, when talking about how we will respond to the growing attainment gap, we must avoid a broad-brush technique.

Nuance is vital

We need a much more nuanced and intelligent approach. 

Our response must be based on individual pupil need, not on a generic idea of one size fits all. 

By far the greatest factor in improving the attainment of children, as shown time and again in research studies, is high-quality teaching. 

Discussions around a catch-up curriculum and a national focus on one-to-one or small group tutoring are ongoing. 

There is general agreement that we will need a holistic, sustained evidence-based approach to reduce the attainment gap. And don’t be misled into thinking this can all be overcome in the autumn term. 

Current thinking is that we will need at least a two-year programme to support the disadvantaged and SEND children to even begin to catch up with their peers. 

Debra Roscoe is the lead Sendco for a multi-academy trust in Berkshire