SEND performance

• SEND Service team structure - November 2023 (PDF)

The SEN2 data is released every year. Local authorities provide the Department for Education with their data, so it can all be stored in one place. 

The data includes information about individuals with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities, Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs), and appeals.

It is used to make sure that local authorities are doing their jobs how and when they should be. The data is one year behind, and is published in June with the data from the whole of the year before. 

An easy read version of our analysis allows children, young people and their families to see how Swindon performed last year compared to the rest of the country.

You can view this below:

• SEN2 2023 easy read (PDF)

Previous year actual (PYA)

Please note: This data is taken from the December 2023 scorecard

Exceptions

Where there are exceptional circumstances, it may not be reasonable to expect local authorities, and other partners, to comply with the limits above. The Special Educational Needs and Disability Regulations 2014 set out specific exemptions. These include:

• appointments with whom the local authority has requested information are missed by the child or young person (this only applies to the duty on partners to comply with a request under the EHC Needs Assessment process within 6 weeks)
• where the child or young person is absent from the area for a period of at least 4 weeks
• exceptional personal circumstances affecting the child or his/her parent, or the young person
• where the educational institution is closed for at least 4 weeks, which may delay the submission of information from the school or other institution (this does not apply to the duty on partners to comply with a request under the EHC Needs Assessment Process within 6 weeks) 

Compared with the data for December 2022, the graph is showing us that the 20 week timeliness is the same as in December 2023, 60.0%. Some of the reasons timeliness has been affected in previous months can be attributed to:

The volume of requests for statutory assessment received which puts pressure not only on the SEND Service, but also on the advice writing services who contribute to the assessment particularly - the Educational Psychology Service and Social Care.

Swindon have commissioned Invision360 - an online EHCP auditing tool to ensure effective quality assurance. It promotes best practice by improving QA consistency and standardisation across the local area. 

Invision360’s quality framework draws on relevant legislation and several well-respected good practice guides that underpin local government practice (including, Council for Disabled Children’s EHCP Good Practice Guidance, IPSEA’s EHC Plan Checklist, SEND Code of Practice).

• An on-line step-by-step process, that provides greater consistency and objectivity to the EHCP quality assurance process
• Utilises criteria based on nationally recognised good practice and provides examples of ‘what good looks like’ to the auditor
• Allows benchmarking against other local authorities using the tool (more than 25 local authorities nationally) 

Please note: The Quality Assurance Framework is being updated to reflect the move to using Invision360. This is being monitored via Priority 4 of the SEND & Inclusion Strategy.

Audit summaries and explanations

Between, 7 November 2023 and 16 January 2024 Swindon audited a total of 15 EHCPs using the Invision 360 tool. During this time, there has been a decrease in the number of plans being rated as ‘Good’, and an increase in the number rated as ‘Requiring Improvement’.

However, the number of EHCP gradings overall this cycle was significantly higher than the last cycle. During Cycle 8, 7 EHCP plans were graded. This means 8 more graded plans were completed during Cycle 9 than Cycle 8. 

Some of the reasons which could contribute to the decrease in total plans audited during this cycle are:

• a change in the percentage of audits being allocated from 100% to 40%, in a hope to see the impact of our Quality Assurance activity
• Swindon has had 2 EHCPs graded as Inadequate during this cycle
• Swindon has not graded an EHCP as ‘Outstanding’ during this time

Swindon LA EHCP Quality- Improvement Journey. 

On the ‘Percentage of Good and Outstanding Gradings’ graph you can see the percentage of each section of the EHC Plan graded as ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding’ for Cycles 8 and 9. Cycle 9 is the latest data gathered between 7 November 2023 and 16 January 2024. 

On the ‘Percentage of RI and Inadequate Gradings’ graph you can see the percentage of each section of the EHC Plan graded as ‘Requires Improvement’ or ‘Inadequate’ for Cycles 8 and 9. Cycle 9 is the latest data gathered between 7 November 2023 and 16 January 2024. 

These graphs tell us that Swindon has areas of strength and areas of weakness when it comes to writing EHC Plans.

Swindon local authority have a higher percentage of EHC Plans Quality Assured as ‘Good’ at 60.0%, compared to the National Average at 33.1%. Whereas the National Average has a has a higher percentage of Plans Quality Assured as ‘Requires Improvement’ at 31.9% compared to Swindon’s data at 26.7%.

Compared to the National Average, Swindon has a lower percentage of Plans Quality Assured as ‘Inadequate’ at 13.3%, to the National Average of 33.7%. 

Swindon has not seen any EHC Plans Quality Assured as ‘Outstanding’ during this cycle whereas, the National Average has seen 1.2% of Plans graded as ‘Outstanding’

Please note: This is the first cycle to have annual review data analysed, therefore there is no data to compare this cycle’s annual review data too.

During Cycle 9, 7 November 2023 to 16 January 2024, a total of 11 annual reviews have been quality assured using the Invision 360 annual review tool. During this cycle, a higher percentage of annual reviews were graded as ‘Silver’ than ‘Gold’.

During Cycle 9, the Percentage of ‘Good’ and ‘Outstanding’ Audit gradings by section graph shows us that Swindon have areas of strengths and weakness when it comes to quality assurance of annual reviews.

During this Cycle, the SEND Service has worked closely with Invision 360 to review the questions within the annual review tool to ensure we are getting the most accurate grading of quality.

Some of the reasons which could contribute to the total number of annual reviews audited during this cycle are:

• a change in the percentage of audits being allocated from 100% to 40%, in a hope to see an impact of our quality assurance activity
• staffing changes, where new staff are undertaking training prior to having a caseload

Parent/carer feedback for the annual review process.

After the annual review process, a survey is sent out to parents to return feedback on how they view their child’s annual review process was conducted. It is important for the SEND Service to receive feedback on our annual review processes to help make improvements to the process and improve the experience for SEND families and children.

From this evaluation of responses, we can see that out of the 28 responses given that parents/carers who have young people with an EHCP feel that Swindon has areas of strengths and weaknesses around the annual review process.

We can see that Question 1 had the most positive response during this evaluation. We can also see that questions 3 and 4 has the most negative responses from parents/carers with question 3 having the only response of ‘strongly disagree’. From this we can conclude that Swindon needs to improve how the outcomes of an annual review meeting are presented as well as how well we parents/carers are included in the annual review meeting/discussion.

Older children’s feedback on the annual review process. 

After the annual review process, a survey is sent out to older children to return feedback on how they view their annual review process was conducted. It is important for the SEND Service to receive feedback on our annual review processes to help make improvements to the process and improve the experience for SEND families and children.

From this evaluation of responses, we can see that out of the five responses given, the annual review process was mainly a positive experience for the young people who answered the survey.

Please note: The tribunal data was gathered on 8 January 2024.

In 2022, we received 63 requests for tribunal. Altogether in 2023 we have received 79 requests for tribunal. This means we have exceeded last year’s figures for requests for tribunals by 16. 

In the month of December 2022, we received 4 new requests for tribunal. In the month of December 2023, we have received 4 new requests for tribunal. This is the same value compared with December 2022. 

We have also seen a decrease in the number of new requests for tribunal relating to section I of the EHCP (named placement) for December 2023 (compared to December 2022). This has decreased to 0 requests compared to December 2022 in which there was 1 new requests to appeal section I.

The total in 2022 for appeals against section I reached 27. Altogether in 2023, we reached 43, exceeding last year’s figure by 16.

Please note: The Contact Log analysis includes all contacts received via the ‘Front Door’ via Email, Phone, Post or the SEND Portal. This data does not include communications sent to individual officers. 

Contacts into the service are RAG rated on a 24, 48, 72 and 96 hour time period.  

The pie chart shows the number of contacts received into the SEND Service in December 2023. It shows that 90.46% of communications received via the ‘Front Door’ are responded to before their allocated deadline. This is an 5.19% increase compared to the data reported in the last SEND Performance Page, which showed as 85.27% overall. 

The table also shows a decrease in the number of contacts RAG rated as Exceeded for the month of December 2023, which is a decrease of 623 compared to December 2022 (1414 contacts overall). There has also been an increase in the number of Met contacts during December 2023, reaching to 205 compared to December 2022 which was 30.