Additional Learning Needs Archives

Appeals and school admissions: how to handle them efficiently

Posted on: 28 February 2024

Appeals are an inevitable part of the school admissions process. How can they be effectively and efficiently handled to make the process easy and fair?

Effective and efficient handling of the school admissions process is essential to achieving the goal of a fair and transparent process for all. In this blog, we will look at the appeals process. Appeals are an inevitability. Every admissions authority will have to deal with them every year. In our last blog we looked at oversubscription criteria. They go hand-in-hand with appeals, since they are only required when more applications are received than there are school places available. Evidencing them, and how they’ve been adhered to, is essential to a fair and transparent appeals process.

The central tenets of the appeals process are twofold. Firstly, every parent has the right to appeal a place on behalf of their children. Secondly, the process must be fair and transparent. As we discussed previously, oversubscription criteria must be publicly available and their bespoke ordering by authority laid out.

The appeals process becomes a possibility when the authority rejects a child’s application. In rejecting it, the authority must:

Make clear the reasons why the application was rejected
Inform the parent of their right to appeal
State the deadline for submitting any appeal
Provide the necessary details to make any appeal
Inform the parent that they must set out their grounds for appeal

The report for the 2022/23 school year shows that there were 53,086 appeals; 38,186 for secondary school applications and 14,900 for primary schools. This that means that 3.5% of applications are appealed by parents. So, how can the process be handled fairly and transparently?

Efficient processing of appeals in the school admissions process

The School Admissions Code lays out that authorities must establish a panel to hear appeals. Where appeals are heard by a panel, the decision is binding; the school must either admit the child or the application is confirmed as rejected.

In the 2022/23 school year, 19.8% of appeals were successful. This shows that authorities are getting the majority of rejections right. Yet, mistakes do happen.

Technology can play a fundamental role in fair provision and oversight of the admissions process. Where a place has been rejected, for example, because a family resides outside of the catchment area, being able to show the working on this is essential. In a manual process, this means revisiting how the decision was reached. Linking to a geo-mapping application provides robust evidence in an instant.

Other criteria, such as faith, can quickly be evidenced, too. Where a parent hasn’t submitted relevant supporting documentation to evidence their child is of the same faith of the school, the authority can quickly demonstrate that other applications were accepted as a result of this.

Making the process easy for parents is paramount, too. With a parent portal, applications and appeals can be made easily and recorded against the child’s record simultaneously. This further helps with timelines, since any appeals process can be withdrawn after the established date for their submission has passed.

If a panel is convened to hear an appeal, they too can have easy access in one place to the process, the rejection and the grounds for appeal. This helps them to make better informed, fairer decisions.

Conclusion

Nothing can prevent appeals from happening. As the statistics show, they are a prevalent part of the school admission process. Rather, authorities need to be in the best possible position to respond to them.

Where the end-to-end process is handled in a central system, it makes evidence gathering, communications and reaching fair and transparent decisions much more straightforward. Messages and outcomes can be submitted and received via a central portal. This means that parents receive information instantly and can appeal via the same method.

Appeals are to be expected, so being in position to administer them is crucial. They are a central part of the overarching school admissions process. Having a system in place, linked to admissions and oversubscription criteria, helps to make the task of implanting a fair and transparent process much easier for everyone. If the system is simpler for schools and authorities, it will be for parents, too.

The technology exists now to make the admissions process easier to administer, as well as fairer and more transparent for children and their families.

This is a topic that we’ve covered in greater detail, examining the entire admissions process, in our recent white paper, A fair school admissions process for all. You can download a free copy here.

Managing oversubscription criteria in the school admissions process

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When an admissions authority receives more applications for a school than it has spaces available, it must order the provision of places according to its oversubscription criteria. These rules can be bespoke to each admissions authority. The criteria must be transparent and easy to understand, with a public outlining of the criteria available. So, how can this process be handled fairly and transparently?

Admissions arrangements must be in line with the School Admissions Code. “The purpose of this code is to ensure that all school places for maintained schools and academies are allocated and offered in an open and fair way.” The code has the force of law.

Exceptions to oversubscription criteria

There are exceptions to whom oversubscription criteria do not apply. Children with identified special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) who have an education health and care plan (EHCP) which specifically names a school, must be offered a place.

Once they have been offered a place, the highest priority must then be given to looked after children and previously looked after children.

Having a record of any EHCP or child looked after status in the authority’s system already makes it easy for admissions teams to validate the status of such an application. A joined-up approach is essential for handling applications fairly and transparently. A robust evidence base also makes handling appeals much easier.

Once EHCPs and children looked after have been allocated places, the rest of the applicants must be sorted through. In the easiest case scenario, there will be fewer applications than there are available place and, simply, they must all be offered a place.

Setting out your oversubscription criteria

Every admissions authority must set out its arrangements against which school places are allocated in the event of oversubscription. Each authority can define and order the criteria in their own way. There is no prescribed ordering of criteria, or even which criteria must be included.

The following is an inexhaustive and unindicative list of oversubscription criteria:

Siblings: It may sound obvious, but the authority must outline its interpretation of the term ‘sibling’. This is to cover step-siblings and adoptions. Linking family records in a central system makes defining and implementing the interpretation straightforward.
Catchment area: These must be designed by the authority to be reasonable and clearly defined. Linking this to digital mapping solutions can further help define a catchment in a system by considering factors such walking time to a school.
Feeder schools: These must be nominated by the authority and clearly defined. Linking records in a central system helps determine this, since obtaining current school attended information is easy.
Social and medical records: Authorities must clearly set out how social and medical records will be used in this context. Enabling parents to submit any records as part of their initial application makes the process easier for everyone.
Ability or aptitude: Any such requirements must be publicly available. Only grammar schools can base their entire intake based upon this.
Faith schools: Enabling parents to submit supporting documentation at the point of application makes determining this much easier for everyone. Where faith schools are undersubscribed, places must be offered to all applicants regardless of faith.
Children of staff: The School Admissions Code states that this applies to children of staff who have been working at the school for two or more years, or where the staff member has been recruited to fill a vacant post for which there is a demonstrable skills shortage. Linking records again helps to make determining this easier.

Conclusion

Oversubscription criteria are essential to a fair and transparent admissions process. Where places are appealed, a robust set of protocols also helps to argue the admission authority’s decisions.

It is also a process that can be automated. Where complete information on a child is held in an authority’s education management information system, all relevant information can be submitted by parents, schools and professionals, recorded against the child and considered when oversubscriptions criteria are called upon in the school admissions process.

This makes collecting evidence for appeals much more straightforward. No more manually trawling through records, aspects such as catchment areas can simply be called upon and put forward to an appeals panel.

It also makes determining admissions based on the bespoke criteria of the admissions authority much easier. To use catchment area as an example again, linking to mapping tools makes determining distance from a school incredibly straightforward. The decision can then be logged in the central system, with no need to resort to spreadsheets and physical copies of children’s records and the outcomes of their admissions.

The technology exists now to make the admissions process easier to administer, as well as fairer and more transparent for children and their families.

What do you get from your education software provider?

Posted on: 5 October 2023

The education software and integrated systems that you use to underpin your education services and processes are vital to the effective and efficient operation and oversight of your services. From early years to admissions and transfers, SEND/ALN to virtual school services, technology plays a fundamental role in efficient, effective and fair educational services to meet increasingly complex objectives. But what are your services getting from your software providers? From initial training through to ongoing support and maintenance, your providers play an important role themselves in sustaining your services.

Selecting the right technology means selecting the right partner. It’s not simply a case of buying a system and then switching it on. There’s an implementation to be planned and programmed, data to be exported, cleansed and imported. Then there are ongoing support needs and updates required over time to keep the system secure, compliant and supporting your evolving needs.

Getting started with your education software

Once a decision has been made, how are you going to get your team up to speed with your new education software? Ensuring that training is included in the procurement process is essential. So too is agreeing costs for any extra sessions, such as training and development.

Running parallel to this is ensuring that the configuration of local process covers everything you need. We’ve seen many cases where authorities have purchased the minimum viable product to meet procurement thresholds. They’ve then found layer upon layer of additional cost once they’ve gone live. These costs cover anything from additional infrastructure to third party licence agreements in order to get the system working.

Understanding these hidden extras can greatly help in gaining a more accurate cost of your education software. Building upon minimum viable products can be timely as well as expensive. Mapping this all out can minimise friction and disruption upon implementation. Better still, identifying a partner which has the experience and capability to work with local issues out of the box brings everything into scope upfront. Understanding how ongoing changes will be managed further helps to achieve your objectives over time.

How will your education software be updated?

Another issue we see repeatedly is the downtime associated with upgrades and maintenance. This covers everything from enhancements to the software to critical security patches. Standalone systems can help with this. They can help in greatly reducing the time your software is unavailable for. Any necessary work can also be conducted at times that best suit you.

Where your education software is linked to another piece of software within the same suite of products, updating one facet requires the downtime of everything else, too. So, for example, if your education software provider needs to update another system that is entirely unrelated to education and the work you do, but sits on the same architecture, it will mean that your software will be unavailable whilst their systems are updated.

IMPULSE Nexus – what you see is what you get

CACI has designed its IMPULSE Nexus education software to suit the needs of local authorities like yours. It is modular by design, so you can pick up and plug in the parts that you need. This means you’re free to use as much or as little of IMPULSE Nexus as your needs require.

All our pricing is upfront and transparent. You don’t have to pay for the bits of the software that you don’t need. This helps you manage your overarching software ecosystem that can use IMPULSE Nexus as part, or the heart of it.

Like everyone else, we do conduct upgrade work to IMPULSE Nexus. As a standalone system, however, we can work with you on the best time to conduct these. There are three every year, so there’s always advance warning and time to make arrangements. We also offer a hosting solution which means that we can carry out these upgrades for you as a fully managed service. This further reduces friction and minimises downtime.

Furthermore, as IMPULSE Nexus is a standalone system, any upgrade work won’t impact your integrated systems.

Where you need further support from the team at CACI, our costs are transparent and upfront. Our annual advisory service (AAS) days are bookable in advance or as and when you need them. These are designed to help you with everything from project management to additional training. You can find out more here.

IMPULSE Nexus is used by authorities across the UK, including Birmingham City Council. You can find out more about how it uses IMPULSE Nexus to handle its admissions process here.

If you would like more information on IMPULSE Nexus, please visit our website here.

The SEND review and reshaping EHCPs

Posted on: 16 December 2022

One of the suggestions of the recent SEND review was to overhaul EHCPs. We take a look at how this can be done and what it will mean

The Department for Education (DfE) commissioned the SEND Review in 2019. The aim of this review was to explore the challenges faced by children and their families with identified special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). In March 2022, after much consultation, a green paper was published which puts forward several suggestions as to how the SEND process can be better administered to improve efficiency and, ultimately, improve outcomes for those children and their families. In amongst the plethora of suggestion sits one around EHCPs (education, health and care plans). I wanted to use this blog to explore this area specifically, since the response to the DfE’s suggestions is already available to schools, children, their families and local authorities.

What does the DfE want to do with EHCPs?

In short, the DfE wants to streamline EHCPs. As things stand, there is a loose outline for EHCPs but the level of detail within them is at local discretion. This has resulted in inconsistencies at local and national levels, leading to inconsistent responses to them. This is particularly acute where professionals work across two localities: getting to grips with two interpretations of EHCPs takes time and increases the manual, administrative burden upon professionals.

As the SEND green paper notes; “There were inconsistences in the structure, length and formatting of EHCP forms, with the samples included in the analysis ranging from a maximum of 40 pages in one local authority to between 8 and 23 in another. The EHCPs produced by the local authorities in the sample would take approximately 50 minutes on average to read aloud to a child. This lack of consistency means that partners who work across multiple local authorities must navigate multiple processes and templates, reducing their capacity to deliver support and adding to their administrative burden… We therefore propose to introduce standardised EHCP templates and processes.”

Sounds sensible, how will it work in practice?

The central hook upon which EHCPs will be hung going forward will be via a template provided by the DfE. This will standardise the information captured and make it easier for professionals to traverse each EHCP, simplifying the interpretation of the information within them and making it easier to input appropriately into each child’s journey.

Another rule that the DfE is seeking to implement around EHCPs is that any changes to them will need to be signed off by the parents of the child. Their increased involvement is seen as central to the success of the SEND process going forward.

The fundamental change to the management and administration of EHCPs is that the DfE is looking to fully digitise them. This means that they will only be accessible digitally. This will make the process much more efficient and transparent, since each EHCP will have a fully auditable trail of activities and inputs. This will make interpreting each EHCP much quicker, too, since a complete record of professional and parental input will be visible to schools, professionals and parents.

Creating a central record will enable for greater control, ease of access and interpretation of data for everyone concerned. Children with identified SEND necessarily find themselves in a multi-agency scenario, so tying their record together digitally makes interpreting and understanding their journey easier.

This also makes the information pertaining to a child’s SEND status useful beyond the boundaries of education. For example, in a youth justice scenario, it’s useful for practitioners to have a complete view of the young people within their services. Having information on their SEND can be informative in painting a complete picture of their journey and understanding their life story.

Technology supporting the single view

In creating a fully digital EHCP, there is a tacit acknowledgement of the involvement of technology. The vast majority of schools, local authorities, parents and professionals have the ability to access and record information digitally. How the DfE will implement this will be the interesting point.

A number of different technology solutions exist across the education industry, so there’s no chance of every authority and school deploying the same software. Nor should there be. Each school and authority should be free to select the technology and partners that work best for them.

Where the DfE will need they systems to work for them is in regards of interoperability. How can the information in an EHCP be shared between systems in multi-agency scenarios?

Most systems support this, with the ability to establish the set of data fields that will be outlined by the DfE and can communicate with third party systems to send and receive information. This will be vital in achieving the SEND aims of the DfE for EHCPs.

Conclusion

Achieving this single view of a child is something that we fully support, and our recent white paper covers the topic across children’s services more broadly. In multi-agency scenarios, such as those presented by SEND, it is imperative that all parties can access and record information unilaterally whilst contributing to the ultimate goal of improved outcomes for children with SEND.

A standardised response to SEND and EHCPs will also make the entire process more transparent, without local interpretations causing issues for children moving schools, region or for professionals picking up disparate cases. The response to SEND should not depend upon where you live and the process should be transparent and consistent for everyone.

As a technology provider in the education sector, we have long seen the benefit of interoperability with third party software providers in the sector. The ability to send and receive data seamlessly creates efficiencies in the process that will be to the ultimate benefit of the end service user, in this case children with identified SEND.

Creating a rich, single view of every child can only be beneficial in data mapping, understanding behaviours and tackling the challenge of improving outcomes for all children. We too often see information, systems and processes siloed into regions and sectors, so the aims of the DfE are welcome in tackling this. Education is a right for all children and young people, ensuring that the process is open, fair and easy to understand makes it a lot easier for everyone.

Creating a single view of the SEND journey is an important step. Making their information available to the multiple agencies that interact with SEND children, will only enhance the ability of each agency to interpret and record data on them, sharing their professional insights with others involved in their journey.

What to expect from the ALN code and how authorities can support it

Posted on: 23 September 2021

In September, the Additional Learning Needs (ALN) code went live across Wales. The ALN code replaces the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) framework that will continue to function across England. The change is being made in order to bring support networks and resources together and improve outcomes for children and young people with identified additional learning needs.

Obviously, one of the major changes is in the wording. Special educational needs replace additional learning needs; therefore, SENCOs will become ALNCOs. The changes, however, are more than just linguistic and will involve significant changes in thinking about process and practice.

At present, any child or young person recognised as having SEN is given an individual education plan (IEP). These are being phased out in Wales, to be replaced by an individual development plan (IDP). IEPs stop when a young person finishes school; IDPs will carry on if the young person attends higher or further education, covering their entire education journey from 0-25.

ALN will further cover children and young people who have learning difficulties and disabilities (LDD), bringing LDD and SEN together in a single code.

Highlights

Covers each young person with ALN from 0-25
Merges SEN and LDD
IDPs to replace IEPs

About the IDP

IDPs are structured to include minimum standards that must be adhered to by every school and local authority:

A record of the child’s identified, developing and changing needs
Required additional provisions for each child
A timely, current action plan and agreed outcomes for each child
How each element of progress is and will be measured
Information that enables accountability which is legally enforceable
Review dates to measure actions, tasks and outcomes

Ensuring that IDPs work efficiently and effectively will require services to collaborate to ensure that children recognised with ALN receive the support that they need to achieve the stated goals. This co-ordination between schools, colleges, other providers and local authority services will require a greater degree of flexibility in receiving and transferring holistic case records and data seamlessly.

It will also require more robust data capture, entry and checking to ensure that all contributions have been considered and the information is current, accurate and relevant within a child’s IDP. This is vital given that the IDP is an accountable and legally enforceable document. In sharing and collaborating on such important documents, their security and management is also paramount, containing as they will vast quantities of sensitive personal data.

Children, parents, outcomes

The collaboration goes beyond just working with other authorities and schools as the child or young people move schools or move location. There also needs to be full engagement with, and the provision of, information and appropriate advice to the families and young people. Again, the information needs to be shared seamlessly in a secure and timely fashion to enable families, children and young people to input into their journey and opportunities as appropriate.

The success of the ALN code will depend on this sharing of specific information about meeting needs, so it’s important for schools, colleges, other providers and authorities to consider new ways in how they will address the challenges and include the views of young people, parents and carers in the process, and the necessary adaptations to their service.

The role of technology

With all the relevant information stored electronically, amending, updating, transferring and receiving case records and IDPs will be performed using synchronised common structured data via a central hub system. The easiest way to open the entire process to the multi professional eco system in a secure fashion is via dedicated portals; one each for parents/carers, schools/colleges, local authorities and professionals. This enables everyone who needs to contribute to the process to have self-service tailored access and visibility so they can more easily make their contributions.

Maintaining a single, uniquely structured ALN case record enables schools, colleges and authorities to use the holistic view of each child to establish effective support. They can operationally establish things like reminders so that they can review and assess each case in good time and strategically use the structured data to understand and better respond to patterns of unmet need in different groups.

Having a well-structured central record then plays into the accountable and legally enforceable element of the IDP, since a transparent record of all chronological activity within the IDP will be available on demand. Furthermore, where a child moves school or placement, or a young person goes to college or university, their IDP can be simply passed to prospective institutions at which they will be continuing their education. These institutions will have a full record of prospective students, enabling them to plan and facilitate offers for their joining in good time, increasing the opportunity and likelihood of meeting stated outcomes.

Security

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) necessitates robust handling of data such as IDPs and information surrounding young people. How does your school or authority store its data?

Working with a technology partner that can assist you with data hosting solutions is one option, since outsourcing hosting is one way of staying compliant with GDPR and means that you are storing data with a trusted partner. This means that you can store your data with the flexibility you need, on premise or in cloud, to give your teams real-time access to your data.

Aspects such as backups and downtime also need to be considered alongside security – if there’s a system outage, how long can you afford to be without your data and how much can you afford to lose? Scalable solutions offer greater flexibility in managing, storing and securing your data as well as working with a growing user population involved in the meeting of ALN support needs over many years.

Improving outcomes

Fundamentally, however, you need a technology solution and a technology partner that can empower your authority and the staff in schools, colleges and other providers in the education support eco system to achieve the fundamental objective of the ALN code – improving outcomes for children and young people with recognised ALN.

CACI’s IMPULSE Nexus software is being used by several Welsh councils to support this underlying objective, whilst also helping them to comply with data and security regulations by offering a fully managed hosting service. This helps to take the uncertainties out of data storage and management alongside providing an information management solution that facilitates the seamless recording, transfer and receiving of holistic case records and data with improved engagement and contribution from the people around the child.

IMPULSE Nexus fully supports the ALN code by operating a uniquely structured and synchronised common central hub case record and IDP with associated identification and support information. Further, the dedicated IMPUSE Nexus portals provide schools/colleges, parents/carers, professional and local authority staff a direct, relevant and focused online experience to collaborate on delivering the centralised IDP, with a fully auditable and transparent record of activity. This creates greater collaboration between professionals, providers and authorities, helping to realise the purpose of the ALN code in delivering better outcomes for children and young people.

If you would like any further information on how IMPULSE Nexus and how CACI’s dedicated team can support you with the implementation and future success of the ALN code in Wales, please visit: https://www.caci.co.uk/products/product/impulse-nexus