SEND clusters in South Gloucestershire

South Gloucestershire’s 2017 local area special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) inspection identified several areas for improvement including leadership, timely identification of need, educational outcomes for children and young people with SEND[¹], and joint commissioning and access to targeted support. A new SEND strategy was agreed for the local area, implemented from 2018. As part of this a new school-led model for children and young people at special educational needs (SEN) support was developed and a cross-phase cluster pilot operating in two geographical areas launched in 2019. At the time, there was an over-reliance on Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) as the main means of accessing support, and the work of the clusters was to build capacity within schools to improve early identification of need with arrangements for providing access to support, and thereby reduce escalation of need. The aims of the cluster approach would be access to support at the right time, reduced exclusion rates and improved educational outcomes.

The model was supported by South Gloucestershire Schools Forum, with funding from the High Needs Budget delegated to the lead school for each cluster to develop a more effective response for children and young people with SEND across the schools in their geographical area.

The potential of the school-led cluster model, and commitment of local school leaders to promoting their collective responsibility to deliver an effective response to meeting the needs of all children and young people with SEND, was evident to the inspection team and captured in the local area SEND inspection re-visit in 2020. Consequently, the Schools Forum agreed that a five-cluster model should be rolled out covering the whole local area and this was implemented in the 2020/2021 academic year, supported with a total budget of £1 million. Over three years on, the clusters are an established part of the local SEND system in South Gloucestershire. Local SEND system leaders consider that the SEND clusters have encouraged greater understanding, improved identification and collective responsibility for children and young people with SEND, including on the part of mainstream schools, and continues to be borne out by feedback from school staff. Benchmarked data also indicate an improvement in identification and outcomes for children and young people with SEND.

The SEND Effective Practice Evidence Framework considers that the “strength of evidence” of this case study is promising – the clusters have been reviewed internally, with some external validation via the local area SEND inspection revisit and have been sustained for more than two years. The “breadth of impact” of this case study is emerging – there is evidence of impact in the form of feedback from practitioners involved with the clusters, along with some evidence of improving outcomes for children and young people.[²]

[1] For ease of reading, we use the term ‘SEND’ to refer to disabled children and young people and children and young people with special educational needs.

[2] The SEND Effective Practice Evidence Framework uses two “signal strength” indicators to present the strength of evidence and the breadth of impact of a case study. Each indicator has four bars – emerging, promising, good and robust. The “strength of evidence” indicator is based on how the project has been evaluated and the length of time it has been sustained. The “breadth of impact” indicator is based on whether the case study can demonstrate impact in four broad areas – the more areas of impact, the higher the signal strength indicator.