The government’s recently announced intention to create ‘thousands of additional places in inclusion bases’ in schools presents challenges and opportunities for non-school AP (NSAP). The prospect of schools holding additional budgets with which to commission NSAP offers the possibility of NSAP collaborating with inclusion bases by working with children, on a time-limited basis,  whose complex needs require specialist interventions. On the other hand, the use of NSAP to support the work of inclusion hubs, or indeed any aspect of Targeted Plus programmes, creates barriers for providers in a number of ways, one of these is the importance of NSAP providing consistently good tracking information and communicating this effectively with the school.

Communication between schools and NSAP is not always seamless. When I ran a non-school AP, links between on-roll schools and our provision were routinely poor. There was no onus on either party to communicate effectively, our attempts to do so were generally unsuccessful; looking back, we should have tried harder to establish good links because poor communication was undoubtedly detrimental to children’s progress and sense of themselves as learners. We are at a very different juncture now.

The DfE’s  consultation document on SEND reform, Putting children and young people first, sets out the government’s intention to legislate for each child with SEND needs to have an Individual Support Plan (ISP). The ISP is a digitised document which will follow a child through the education system; it will include all SEND information, including tracked support, whether delivered in or out of school. NSAP will be expected to contribute fully to ISPs; this means settings must keep rigorous records of each child’s needs and the ways in which these are met in their provision. NSAP will also be required to track each child’s progress in attendance, social, emotional and mental health aspects as well as in core curriculum subjects (Maths, English and Science). Whether this is achieved through manual systems or through purpose built software solutions, NSAP must be systematic about measuring progress and providing data and evidence of impact to referring schools.

For a long time, in our AP, we used to use Word and Excel documents to keep track of student progress; this became onerous as the volume of referrals grew and requirements of local authority (LA) quality assurance frameworks developed. It was at that point that we began to work with a friendly web-developer to build our own system for tracking progress. We were fortunate to have a developer at the top of their game prepared to work pro-bono; the creative process was challenging, but the end result made things easier in the long run; strong and reliable data-driven evidence also enhanced our credibility among commissioners. 

If NSAP are to be considered key partners in education the sector will need to embrace the importance of systematic student tracking and communication with schools. Manual systems are fine providing they are robustly implemented, but whether manual or digital – the future is upon us in this respect, and the sooner we apply ourselves to the challenge, the better our outcomes will be.