SEND Census
SEND CENSUS
Each term school will be asked to complete the School Census. As SENDCo, you should be asked to complete the school census alongside your business manager and head teacher.
The School Census is a statutory requirement of schools, under Section 537 of the Education Act 1996 (Sections 1.2.1 of School census 2017 to 2018 guidance). The information collected on special educational needs via the school census provides the only individual level source of data on children and young people with special educational needs. Central and local Government, Ministers, Parliament, external organisations, and the public use this data to monitor government policies and their effectiveness.
The Headteacher is responsible for the review and authorisation of census data, prior to submitting it to the local authority and/ or direct to the Department for Education. The most significant need is the primary area of need. Further needs can be identified but only two rankings are collected in the school census. No two needs can be given the same ranking, that is, if there is more than one SEN type/ description reported they cannot both have a ranking of ‘1’. SEND information is only collected in the spring census and is for all pupils on roll on census day. It is advisable that systems are kept up to date.
You should take this opportunity to review the children on your SEND register and to consider whether they need remain on it or if they have made sufficient progress to be removed. Please ensure you have made parent/carer aware if adding to or removing their child from the SEND register.
How to decide what pupils to record
- Pupils who receive therapeutic or other health-related services from external agencies and who do not receive provision which is additional to or different from that which is normally available should not be recorded as having special educational needs.
- Under-attainment may be an indicator of SEN, but poor performance may be due to other school or home-based factors.
- Lack of competence in the language used in school (English) must not be equated with, or allowed to mask, learning difficulties. A pupil who falls outside the context of the SEN CoP should not be recorded. At the same time, some pupils whose first language is not English may also have SEN.