This article was first published on 25 October 2023

Year on year, the percentage of pupils identified as having special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) is rising. As many as four in 10 children are considered to have such needs at some stage in their education.

But, as Tes editor Jon Severs pointed out in a recent editorial, there’s an important question we need to ask: are we now at the point at which the term “SEND” has lost its utility?

I think we might be. But to understand why, we need to look at the evidence, considering how SEND is identified, what the effects of the SEND label are in the classroom and what might be lost if we abandoned the terminology.

Is SEND in the eye of the beholder?

There is a perception among school leaders that SEND is “real”: an absolute that places certain pupils into an opaque terrain best left to the Sendco.

However, as a 2021 study by the Education Policy Institute showed, there is enormous variability in the proportion of children identified with SEND in different schools that is not accounted for solely by their demographics.

The study concludes that for pupils with SEN support and education, health and care plans (EHCPs), the school a child attends “makes more difference to their chances of being identified with SEND than anything about them as an individual, their experiences or what local authority they live in”.

The report describes the identification of SEND as a “lottery”. It also suggests there may be some unfairness in the system: while all children living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods had substantially higher odds of being identified with SEND, this effect was greatest for the least disadvantaged children within those neighbourhoods.

Even within a system that is heavily weighted towards disadvantage, these patterns suggest some capture of resources by the middle class. In other words, schools are more likely to put better-off children on the SEND register, perhaps because of pressure from parents.

Fundamentally, these findings imply that SEND is in the eye of the beholder. And if it is in part socially constructed rather than “real”, how can we talk about “pupils with SEND” with any legitimacy?

Context is key

It was never intended in legislation that we describe pupils in this way. The 1981 Education Act - which introduced the term “special educational needs” - and the Warnock report that preceded it intended for there to be a model based on needs, locating SEND in the interaction between the child and the provision available in their school, rather than solely within the child.

The current legal definition of SEND identifies a child as having SEND if they have a learning difficulty or disability that calls for special educational provision to be made for them.

In turn, special educational provision is defined as provision that is “additional to, or different from, that made generally for others of the same age” in mainstream schools.

But if a school routinely provides inclusive environments, curricula and teaching for all children, then fewer children need to be identified for provision that is additional or different.

‘We know that labelling a pupil as having SEND can have significant negative consequences’

SEND is therefore relative to the school and classroom context. It’s also, I would argue, vulnerable to being swayed by accountability pressures.

Can it really be, for example, that one in five 10-year-old children have SEND? This is what their teachers think, according to figures from the Department for Education for 2021-22.

Can it be right that summer-born children are many times more likely to be on SEND registers than those born in autumn or winter - with nearly half of summer-born boys identified as having SEND at some point during their primary career?

Or are these children simply not on track for success in end of key stage tests, with the SEND label used to provide an explanation?

The consequences of labelling

These questions matter because we know that labelling a pupil as having SEND can have significant negative consequences.

It risks placing them outside the classroom teacher’s perceived sphere of responsibility. One Sendco, for example, told me how staff in her school talk to her about those with SEND as “your children” - to which she smartly replies: “My children don’t go to this school.”

The SEND label sometimes shifts thinking away from what schools as institutions might do to better meet the needs of all learners and towards a model that seeks to prop up the child identified as different (and, by implication, deficient) in accessing an otherwise undifferentiated curriculum through the provision of one-to-one teaching assistant support in the classroom, for example.

Over-reliance on identifying SEND and invoking the associated procedures can sometimes mean that the teacher who is responsible for the child’s learning may do less to adapt his or her curriculum delivery than if the child were not identified.

Labels of any kind applied to differences we see as aberrations from some fictional norm can soon become pejorative - and affect pupils’ perceptions of themselves.

There is a drift over time from an original positive intention to something less helpful. “He’s special needs” has now taken on negative connotations never intended in the 1981 Education Act, just as “backward”, “handicapped” and “maladjusted” did before then.

Lower expectations

Labels can also serve to lower teachers’ perceptions of what children can achieve. For example, in a 2013 study, Dara Shifrer demonstrated that teachers and parents hold lower educational expectations for high school students labelled with a learning disability than for similarly achieving and behaving students without this label.

In 2021, Cathryn Knight compared children diagnosed with dyslexia with a non-dyslexic group matched on ability, socioeconomic class, levels of parental education and income, gender and age.

She found that teachers and parents of children labelled with dyslexia, and the children themselves, held lower beliefs about their ability in English and maths than their matched peers without this label. They were also significantly less likely to say that they would go to university.

Another interesting study, carried out by Peter Tymms and Christine Merrell in 2006, compared the progress of children who had been formally identified through screening procedures as having SEND - in this case, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) - with those who also had ADHD symptoms but whose class teacher was not told of this, nor SEND procedures invoked.

‘Labels can serve to lower teachers’ perceptions of what children can achieve’

The teachers of this second group were simply provided with general information about how to teach inattentive and hyperactive children. The teachers in the first group were provided with both this information and the names of children identified through screening.

Providing information on teaching strategies was helpful; children in the second group had more positive attitudes towards school and reading and showed improved behaviour when compared with children in schools not given the teaching information.

However, there was a significant negative effect on the reading and mathematics attainment of children who had been formally identified as having ADHD.

The authors suggest that this is because once children are labelled, teachers focus more on keeping them happy and calm rather than pushing them to attain.

Equally, it might mean that teachers relinquished more of the care of the children to additional adults, rather than working directly with them themselves.

The other side of the story

However, there is also evidence to suggest that some diagnoses can be useful. Labels such as dyslexia and autism are helpful because they encourage adults to respond in more effective ways to behaviours they would otherwise construe as evidence of “laziness”, “bad behaviour” and so on.

Research shows that where neurodiversity is recognised and understood, children can benefit socially and emotionally. One recent study by Tomisin Oredipe and colleagues, for example, found that college students who learned they were autistic when they were young felt happier about their lives than those diagnosed when they were older.

Diagnostic labels can help children and young people understand themselves and connect with others with similar characteristics and experiences, to whom they can relate.

Neurodiversity, potentially unlike SEND, is real. There are unquestionably strategies and classroom techniques that remove barriers to learning for students who are autistic, dyslexic, have developmental language disorder, are hearing- or vision-impaired and so on.

Appropriately used, diagnostic labels can steer teachers towards these effective strategies.

Identifying a child as having SEND may, moreover, prompt detailed assessment - of the kind that might, for example, show that a child with challenging behaviour actually has an underlying speech, language and communication need that should be addressed, as eight out of 10 of such children do.

There can be no doubt that children’s needs should be explored and understood as early as possible in their school career.

Nor can there be doubt that in a climate where resources can often become targeted at “cusp” groups of children, where just a little extra help may push them over the threshold towards reaching nationally expected standards, there is a need for some protection for children who may never achieve at this level, or who require a much greater degree of resource to do so.

A focus on disability

So, where does all of this leave us? Is it really time for us to drop the “SEND” term completely?

One way forward might be for the sector to focus less on the “SEN” part of the term and more on the “D”: disability.

Many of the learning difficulties we currently think of in terms of special educational needs are also disabilities. Dyslexia, autism, ADHD and other conditions all fall under the 2010 Equality Act’s definition of disability: a physical or mental impairment that has a substantial and long-term negative effect (lasting at least a year) on an individual’s ability to undertake “normal daily activities”.

Those with disabilities are legally entitled to have “reasonable adjustments” made for them - for example, typing in a lesson rather than using a pen, being pre-taught key vocabulary or being provided with an exit card and a calming place to go to if the classroom environment becomes overwhelming.

Parents can take a school to tribunal if such adjustments are not made, and this provides some protection for their children’s rights.

Accountability tweaks

Currently, schools are also under a legal duty to identify and assess pupils’ special educational needs and to provide the provision specified in an EHCP, once this has been issued.

However, the accountability framework for schools might be tweaked so that Ofsted routinely explores the provision of reasonable adjustments for those identified as disabled, rather than looking at special educational needs provision.

To take things a step further, the separate SEND budgets currently located with local authorities might all be devolved to multi-academy trusts or clusters of schools to meet exceptional needs, with powerful parent councils monitoring their use and deploying the provisions of disability legislation if required.

‘Where neurodiversity is recognised and understood, children can benefit socially and emotionally’

Even this, however, is problematic. Children are no more likely to want to hear themselves described as “disabled” than they are as having “special educational needs” - even less so, perhaps, because of the negative connotations the disability label has come to attract.

Disadvantaged children might also be further disadvantaged as their parents might be less likely to make use of disability legislation to challenge schools. There would be less protection for children with social, emotional and mental health needs, which may be transient or may not have lasted a year before the child reaches the point of potential exclusion from school.

Life without labels

What, then, is the solution? Perhaps it is to abandon all labels and simply recognise that all children have strengths and areas of difficulty, and it is our job to understand these and adapt teaching accordingly.

This can be monitored through accountability frameworks that routinely look at the extent to which a school provides inclusive environments, curricula and teaching for all its pupils.

This wouldn’t be as much of a stretch as it might once have been; if we were to dispense with all labels, current classroom practice has a much better chance of meeting diverse needs than what was in place when the term SEND was introduced in 1981.

Teachers now understand how to scaffold learning, putting in place strategies to help all children tackle the same basic content. Modelling, breaking tasks down into smaller chunks, repeated return to the same content to aid recall, the use of dual coding - these approaches are all part of the cognitive-science revolution that has recently swept education.

And yet these are also the same strategies that have been promoted for children with SEND for many years. They are now becoming universal, reducing the need for separate provision.

Building understanding

Another welcome change has been the increasing provision of technology to all learners, potentially enabling wider use of assistive software - so that those who can’t easily read can hear print read to them, for example, or those who struggle with writing can dictate to a tablet. The more universal our use of technology, the fewer children we need to identify for distinct provision.

Long term, perhaps the solution will also involve building an understanding of neurodiversity and the effects of trauma into our curriculum so that it becomes normal not to meet any fictitious norm, and OK to not always be OK.

Ultimately, we have a choice here. We can perpetuate shame and stigma for children we label as “SEND”. We can come up with yet another euphemism to replace the SEND label.

Or, we can create a culture where all pupils are encouraged to identify their strengths and weaknesses and understand that they may all need a little extra help from time to time.

Some schools, such as Whitefield Primary in Liverpool and Dixons Trinity Academy secondary in Bradford, already demonstrate this culture. I am optimistic that many others will follow their lead.

Jean Gross CBE is an independent consultant and author. She has written extensively about SEND and disadvantage. Her most recent book is Beating Bureaucracy in Special Educational Needs (Routledge, 2023)