More children and young people are being identified with SEND than ever before.
The latest government statistics show that over 20% of children are now identified as needing SEND support, with around 1.3 million pupils receiving SEN Support across England. More than half of all identified primary needs relate to speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) and social, emotional and mental health (SEMH) needs.
At the same time, schools are preparing to publish their Inclusion Strategies by 31 December, while responding to growing expectations around inclusion, early intervention and evidence-informed practice.
The challenge is not a lack of commitment. Nor is it a lack of research. It’s turning what we know into something teachers can actually use every day.
The gap between evidence and practice
The problem with evidence isn’t that there’s not enough. In fact, schools can access more information about SEND than ever before.
Research organisations, charities, specialist providers and government bodies have produced a growing body of guidance covering everything from high-quality teaching and early identification through to specific areas of need such as SLCN and SEMH. The Department for Education, for example, has published guidance to help schools identify and support children and young people with SEND in mainstream settings.
Yet despite this growing body of knowledge, many teachers and school leaders still find themselves asking the same question:
“What does this actually look like on the ground, in my classroom, day to day?”
Part of the challenge is that SEND is complex and nuanced. There is rarely a single intervention, programme or strategy that works for every pupil. Children and young people with the same primary area of need may require different approaches depending on their strengths, barriers and wider context.
The result is that teachers are often presented with broad recommendations such as:
- Develop communication-friendly classrooms
- Strengthen inclusive teaching
- Adopt relational approaches
- Remove barriers to learning
All of which are important. But understanding the principle and applying it consistently in a busy classroom are two very different things.
A teacher may understand that processing time is important for pupils with speech and language needs. They may have received training on the topic and read the relevant guidance. But when a pupil is struggling to answer a question during a lesson, what should they do differently in that moment?
This is where implementation can break down.
The challenge is not knowing that something works. The challenge is helping staff apply that knowledge consistently, confidently and at scale.
This is where practical toolkits can add significant value.
How can practical toolkits help?
At their best, toolkits perform three important functions.
- They’re the bridge between evidence and action
Evidence often tells us what is likely to help pupils. And toolkits help teachers understand what needs to be done as a result.
Take SLCN as an example. With SLCN and SEMH now accounting for more than half of all identified primary needs, schools are increasingly looking for practical approaches to support communication and participation in the classroom.
While the recommendation will be a broad statement such as, ‘communication-friendly teaching’, a toolkit might offer:
- Examples of vocabulary pre-teaching
- Processing-time prompts
- Visual support strategies
- Specific classroom adaptations such as pictorial labels on classroom items or specific displays
The contents of a toolkit add the level of specificity needed to turn a broad recommendation into practical classroom action or adaptation.
- Toolkits create consistency
One of the biggest challenges facing trusts is ensuring that inclusive practice looks similar across multiple classrooms and schools. And it’s especially difficult when you consider that schools and contexts are extremely varied and may have different needs.
While practice should always be tailored to pupils and contexts, some degree of consistency is essential if schools and trusts are to understand what is working and evaluate impact over time.
This in no way should remove professional judgement, but it helps create greater consistency in how support is delivered.
- Toolkits should reduce workload and increase confidence
Teachers should not have to start from a blank page every time they encounter a barrier to learning. And even though every pupil and every need is different, there will be trends and examples of best practice that can be shared and adopted across a setting.
Having access to practical, evidence-informed toolkits that are used across trusts and settings reduces the time spent searching for solutions and increases confidence in supporting pupils effectively.
These documents can be treated in line with the graduated approach, too. So if a teacher encounters a situation or behaviour pattern that isn’t currently factored into a given toolkit, that example could be brought to the leadership team or a forum where it can be discussed, and the document can be reviewed and updated. These toolkits should be living, breathing and adaptable.
What do good SEND toolkits actually contain?
There is no shortage of SEND toolkits online. A quick search on Google will present you with hundreds of examples – frameworks, intervention guides, etc.
In some ways, the challenge facing schools today is no longer access to information, but deciding which information is most relevant to their context and how the toolkit will bridge the gap between information and action.
It’s not difficult to find a toolkit, but the key is using or developing one that reflects a MAT or school’s context and can evolve as pupil needs change.
A good toolkit might include:
Classroom adaptations and approaches for common areas of need such as Speech, Language and Communication needs (SLCN), Social, Emotional and Mental health needs (SEMH) and sensory needs. For example, visual timetables, picture and word labels around the space, an awareness of background noise and guidance on seating pupils struggling with communication nearer to the front so they can hear instructions clearly.
But a transformational toolkit could contain the same adaptation guidance with video clips of how these might be applied.
A toolkit designed to support confident implementation might offer not only the information explaining how vocabulary can be pre-taught ahead of the class but a step-by-step guide to delivering this with engagement and reflection activities for practitioners to benchmark progress.
Decision-making frameworks could feature, too, so that leaders, educators and SENCos can make informed decisions about what strategies to prioritise, how support should be adapted over time and how resources should be targeted.
If a whole-school priority is SLCN, then the toolkit will frame all other goals or objectives through this lens. For example, one school that I was working with identified high numbers of pupils with SLCN, so we developed a communication curriculum that ran through the delivery of every subject.
Leaders could leave space for reflection in these toolkits – to encourage an adaptable and fluid approach. Teachers should be encouraged to ask questions about a specific strategy and how their pupils responded so that they can notice patterns and suggest future adaptations and ideas that can be integrated into the toolkit and shared across settings.
This fluidity, along with the deep evaluation at the start of the process, is how toolkits can become tailored to the needs of a given context. The role of a toolkit is not to provide a one-size-fits-all answer. It is to help leaders, teachers and support staff to make informed decisions about what is most likely to work for the children and young people sitting in front of them.
Schools and teachers don’t just need toolkits; they need the right toolkits – the ones that truly reflect their situation and the pupils they need to support. This comes from the evaluation and reflection that’s done at the start of the process.
It’s this thinking that informed the development of our FREE Inclusion Strategy Preparation Toolkit, which we created to help schools and trusts to write their Inclusion Strategies ahead of the 31st December deadline.
The toolkit has been designed as a practical companion to the DfE’s Inclusion Strategy template, helping schools and trusts to:
- Benchmark their SEND profile against national data
- Identify the barriers to learning that matter most in their context
- Map their current provision against the seven inclusion themes
- Connect priorities, funding and intended outcomes
- Develop a clear statement of intent
Rather than starting with a blank page, leaders are supported to build – not simply write – their strategy on evidence, context and a structured understanding of need.
Only then can an effective toolkit be created for use in the classroom, as it will be built from a true understanding of pupils it will be there to support.
When evidence, evaluation and practical guidance come together, schools are far better placed to turn good intentions into meaningful, consistent support for children and young people.
Upcoming webinar
While many organisations have made inclusion a priority, turning good intentions into meaningful, measurable action remains a challenge.
To learn how to develop an inclusion strategy that delivers real impact, join our upcoming webinar, Building an Inclusion Strategy That Delivers: Turning Priorities into Action. We’ll explore practical approaches, common pitfalls, and actionable steps to help drive lasting change.