How you can help to shape DfE SEND guidance

The Local Government Association has asked all Local Authorities to share the following correspondence from Dingley’s Promise:

This year, the Department for Education (DfE) will be releasing new guidance around assessing SEND in the early years. This has come about after the changes to the EYFS in 2021 that promote a reduction in paperwork and tracking to focus more on quality time with children in settings.

While this is a good thing, there have been concerns raised by practitioners that the paperwork for children with SEND remains significant, due to the need to evidence lack of progress in order to access funding from local authorities.

The new guidance will attempt to resolve this, so that the evidence gathered is proportionate, that children with SEND have the same level of quality direct time with staff, and that we are supporting children with SEND as early as possible and as well as we can.

Your views, recommendations and experiences will help us to create this guidance for the DfE, with the aim of ensuring practitioners feel more able to assess children effectively, and local authorities can integrate the systems into their funding procedures wherever possible. Ultimately, we hope that this will contribute to a reduction in incidences of children with SEND being turned away from settings.

Please could you fill in the survey we have created, and if you are willing to have further discussion with us about the guidance or would like to be involved in reviewing the content once it is created, please add your email address at the end of the survey and we will consider your views in finalising the guidance toolkit. I understand that this might not be an area you are comfortable with, so if you have any early years SEND contacts that you think would be interested in contributing to this, please do forward to them!

Early Years SEND Assessment Best Practice Survey (surveymonkey.com)

Thank you so much for your support in helping us to create the best guidance possible for our sector, and if this could be completed before Monday 29th January that would be hugely appreciated.