The monthly Centres for Excellence in SEND newsletter brings you all the latest news and activities from the three Centres, as well as highlighting the Foundation's SEND CPD opportunities. You can access editions of the newsletter below. You can sign up to receive the newsletter by email by visiting our newsletters page and filling in your details, making sure you tick the ‘SEND’ box.

Links to editions of the ETF SEND newsletter will appear below when they are published.

• Issue 1, December 2019
• Issue 2, January 2020

New research study

The University of Manchester are leading on a long term research study funded by the National Deaf Children's Society, READY (Recording Emerging Adulthood in Deaf Youth) following young people who have a hearing loss as they become independent adults. They are looking to engage with young people aged 15-18 who have a hearing loss or see themselves as deaf. For more information, see the project website or email: ready@manchester.ac.uk.

SEND Review

On the 6 September, the Government announced the launch of a cross-cutting review of SEND five years on from the Children and Families Act. The aim of the review to see if the reforms introduced are supporting children and young people with SEND and to make sure they are being implemented as well as possible. The internal review will look across education, health and care to consider:

• the evidence on how the system can provide the highest quality support that enables children and young people with SEND to thrive and prepare for adulthood, including employment
• better helping parents to make decisions about what kind of support will be best for their child
• making sure support in different local areas is consistent, and that high-quality support is available across the country
• how we strike the right balance of state-funded provisions across inclusive mainstream and specialist places
• aligning incentives and accountability for schools, colleges and local authorities to make sure they provide the best possible support for children and young people with SEND
• understanding what is causing the demand for education, health and care plans
• ensuring that public money is spent in an efficient, effective and sustainable manner, placing a premium on securing high quality outcomes for those children and young people who need additional support.

The government also announced today that Tony McArdle, Lead Commissioner in Northamptonshire County Council, will be the new chair of the SEND System Leadership Board, which brings together sector leaders across Education, Health and Social Care to drive improvements. He will act as an independent advisor to the review, alongside Education Endowment Fund Chair Sir Kevan Collins and Anne Heavey, National Director of Whole School SEN.;

New Reports

In July, the AOC published a research report, Meeting the needs of students aged 16-19 who were not in school for part or all of Key Stage 4: The contribution of general FE (GFE) colleges. The aim of the research to understand better how GFE colleges are working with young people, aged 16+, who ceased to attend school during Key Stage 4 and went on to enrol at college aged 16+. The research project focused on four colleges of different sizes and locations to learn about numbers of such learners, their needs and circumstances, the provision offered, the challenges, and to learn from providers what high-quality provision for those students should look like and how it might be achieved.

The Education and Training Foundation published a Training Needs Analysis report for people working in the Further Education and Training (FE) sector in England. A number of subsiduary reports for Mental Health training and Special Educational Needs training have also been published. The reports are available on the ETF website.

The Department for Education published a Work experience and vocational/technical provision for young people on SEN support: A rapid evidence assessment report. The aim of the rapid evidence assessment was to identify evidence on the benefits (or otherwise) of work experience for these young people as they prepare to enter paid employment. The report highlights a number of principles of good practice for post-16 providers in finding work experience/placements for young people with less complex special educational needs.

Revisits to local areas with a Written Statement of Action (WSoA) for SEND

The Department for Education (DfE) has announced a programme of revisits to those local areas which were asked to produce a WSoA following their SEND inspections. The revisits programme will run alongside the current programme of local area SEND inspections, which is in place until 2021. The revisits do not represent a re-inspection of SEN provision. Inspectors from Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) will only revisit those areas which were asked to produce a WSoA and the focus of the visit will be on the progress made since the original inspection. Revisits will allow Ofsted and the CQC to assess the progress which local areas have made against each of the actions in their WSoA.  They will also provide additional reassurance to families on the progress local services are making, identify where further work is needed, and enable local areas to demonstrate the improvements they have made to SEND services and in delivering better outcomes for children and young people. 

Local areas will usually be revisited within 18 months of their WSoA having been accepted as fit for purpose by Ofsted and CQC. The local area will receive ten days’ notification of the revisit, which will last up to four days, depending on the number of actions in the WSoA. A report will be published on the Ofsted and CQC websites, usually 33 days after the inspectors have finished the revisit. It will set out whether the local area has made sufficient progress against each area of the WSoA.

For more information, visit the Government website. The inspections will be carried out in line with the Local Area SEND Inspection Framework and the newly updated (April 2019) Inspection Handbook.

Northampton College achieved an overall grade of Good in its Ofsted report (December), with Outstanding for their High Needs provision. The report highlights many things including:

Leaders, managers and governors have very high aspirations for students. They use high needs funding very effectively to provide challenging and highly effective individualised learning.

Take a look at our new toolkit Co-creating the curriculum with learners with SEND which has been created to support you to involve learners in deciding what to learn and how they might be taught. It can help you personalise study programmes, you'll find it on the Teaching and Learning and Leadership and Management pages.

Foxes Academy achieved an overall grade of Outstanding in its Ofsted report (July). The report highlights many things including, staff training, the support available to learners and the preparation for employment and careers. 

Partnerships with employers are excellent and productive, assisting learners to enjoy highly effective work experience or work placements. The real working environment of the Foxes Hotel enhances the experiences of learners very successfully.

Visit our Employers and employability page for resources to help you support learners, including our free online course The Right Place created in partnership with Mencap.