Evaluation of the Whole School SEND Review programme: A cluster randomised controlled trial. Evaluation Report

The project: The Whole School SEND (WSS) Review programme is a one-year programme aimed to support secondary schools reflect on, develop, and improve their special educational needs or disabilities (SEND) provision. It is delivered by the National Association for Special Educational Needs (nasen). SEND coordinators (SENDCOs) are supported through training and coaching to work alongside colleagues and drive whole-school change towards inclusive education. Alongside a self-evaluation of SEND provision in their schools, the programme organises peer school visits and supports the creation of school development plans. The goal is that through the programme, improvements would be made in terms of the well-being, attendance levels and, in the longer term, attainment of pupils with SEND, alongside similar benefits for all pupils in the school. The project was a two-arm efficacy, cluster randomised controlled trial. A total of 156 schools with 29,699 pupils, including 4,178 pupils with SEND participated. Schools were randomised to receive either the WSS Review programme or business as usual. The implementation and process evaluation (IPE) included case studies, document analysis of SEND Action Plans, interviews, surveys, observations of training, engagement days, and school visits. The primary outcome was the GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) English Language mark obtained results for pupils with SEND who were in Year 9 when the intervention was delivered. This was to give the effects of the programme time to embed in schools before measuring the impact. The programme was scheduled to deliver from April/May 2020 to June 2021 but with Covid-19 delays, it was reduced in length from 16 months to 11 months and delivered from September 2021 until July 2022. These delays had some considerable implications for the research, most notably, due to respondent fatigue, and schools failing to respond to requests for their data over a greatly extended study period.