AIBU to think this can’t be true are SEN numbers

[Marmite2021]

My dd’s school had pretty dire SATS results a year or two ago and they explained this by saying 20% of that year’s class had special educational needs and that the rest of the class had achieved above average attainment. Their ofsted report suggest they had below average numbers of SEN children and that the ones they did have were being fully supported and making good progress.
For starters 20% SEN pupils in one mainstream class seems extraordinarily high, and it that is “below average” what on Earth is the average??

I mean, that it isn’t true they are why the scores are low.

And you may well be right but why on earth would you raise the comment with OFSTED! Raise it with the Head or with the SEND governor but it has no relevance to OFSTED at all!

I mean by ‘assumption’ that you are interpreting the data in a way that is different to how schools calculate it. That is based on the assumption that the profile of your school as a whole is in line with the average profile of the UK.

spanieleyes really? I think Ofsted would be interested to know if a school was claiming that their low progress was due to SEN kids when in fact the whole year group has low progress. I don’t know. Maybe it would be useful?

The last Ofsted report said SEN kids had adequate support to make progress. The school is saying otherwise.

OFSTED have access to more data than you can possibly imagine, split into sub groups, multiple characteristics, a whole host of ways of analysing and interpreting data. The really aren't bothered what excuse the Head comes up with, just the facts.

I can try to explain it another way:
The school are reporting their SEN data as low to you because:
School SEN group = -8
National SEN data = -6

However, they are aware that there were 2 students out of 12 who performed significantly below the national average and are not concerned that this is an ongoing issue- it’s just an outlier. / OR these below-average scores were across the board, they are concerned, and their school improvement plan will focus on improving outcomes for this group.

Other groups in the school:

Students with orange socks:
School orange sock group = -5
National orange sock group = -8
P8 is negative, but the school are quite happy, because they are doing better for these students than other schools are.

Students with yellow socks:
School yellow sock group = +1
National yellow sock group = 0

P8 isn’t phenomenal, but school are quite happy.

School know that 30% of their intake have orange socks. They report their concerns to parents about the SEN group, because these students have performed worse than the national average of students in this group. They don’t report the orange sock group, because they are actually quite pleased with this result: it’s better than the national average for this group, even though it’s below national average of students as a whole.

Overall, their data reveals negative P8 for their students.
However their contextualised data is actually only a concern in one area- SEN. They have told you about this.

I totally get your point too OP.

The point if "normal" is that it should cover the vast majority of the range of variety of human ability.

Surely SEN should really constitute unusually severe learning needs, not just the lower third of a class?

The teachers differentiation of work should already provide for learning at a range of levels, so I suppose to me the logic would be that something would be classified as SEN where it required additional support to be able to access that differentiated work.

Some children with SEN are at the top of the class! so no one looks at the bottom third and says they are all SEN. Some will be because of specific needs, some will just be lower achievers, you can't just say a child has SEN because they are low achievers!

That's not very clear!
SEN does not equate to low achievers
Some SEN children will be top of the class- my son was!
Some low achievers will not have SEN.
You can't just equate the bottom performing third with theSEN children.

Any children achieving Greater Depth (high achievers) at KS1 crush your progress scores at KS2, so what the HT says is perfectly plausible.

(I have 37% SEND in my class this year, the class below only has 8%. It's just how it goes)

The allocation of SEN is not to “the bottom third of the class”. In some schools there are no students with SEN; in other schools it may be the whole school population. The designation allows school staff to access information about how best to support these students based on detailed understanding of their needs. It also allows those (including parents) who want to evaluate school performance a clear understanding of what factors affect that performance. It has absolutely nothing to do with anyone trying to assign concepts of ‘normal’ to students.

And PP are right to point out SEND does not necessarily equate to bottom of the class... but it often does.

It was a clumsy explanation by the Head, but not necessarily untrue.

Surely SEN should really constitute unusually severe learning needs, not just the lower third of a class?

Dsis and I had SEN but were at the top of our classes at school and both did well at Uni.
The automatic assumption that SEN means academically incapable is really irritating.
Challenged in certain areas yes but automatically scraping along at the bottom of a class no.
DS also has SEN and when he has his accommodations in place he is disappointed if he gets a B mark in a weaker subject.