Contrasting responses to diversity: school placement trends 2014-17 for all local authorities in England

Table of Contents

Introduction

This web application is part of the research output of the project "Contrasting responses to diversity: school placement trends 2014-17 for all local authorities in England" funded under British Academy's BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants (SRG18R1\181595). The research was carried out by Professor Brahm Norwich, Dr Alison Black, Dr Yi Liu and Dr Artemi Sakellariadis.

This project investigates school placement trends of pupils with statements of special educational needs and Education Health and Care Plans of all local authorities in England. It reports on school placement trends from 2014 to 2017, a significant time-span considering the recent changes to national policy and legislation and reported rise in school placement trends since 1983.

Terminology, Methodology and Data

The 5 measures of school placement in each types of schoools are constructed as:

  1. **special schools**:
    Percentage of 0-19 year-olds in separate special schools or special academies, with school types in
    - Maintained special schools
    - Non-maintained special schools
    - Independent special schools
    - Special academies (including free schools)

  2. **special classes**:
    Percentage of 0-19 year-olds in separate units, classes or resource bases within ordinary schools, with school types in
    - Resourced provision in maintained mainstream schools
    - SEN units in maintained mainstream schools

  3. **PRUs**:
    Percentage of 0-19 year-olds in pupil referral units (PRUs) or alternative provision academies
    - Pupil referral units
    - Alternative provision academies

  4. **non-mainstream**:
    Percentage of 0-19 year-olds in separate special schools, PRUs or alternative provision academies
    (i + iii)

  5. **separate schools or classes**:
    Percentage of 0-19 year-olds in any separate provision within or outside ordinary schools,
    (i + ii + iii),

For each type of school, the analysis involves information from the SEN2 forms "Placement of children with a Statement or EHC Plan maintained by each Local Authority", the statutory data collection from local authorities which takes place in January of each year, and mid-year population estimates from the Office of National Statistics (ONS). For further details, please refer to our report (forthcoming). Statistics from Black & Norwich (2014) are included to cover years 2011 and 2013.

In each measure, the numerator data is collected from the 2014-2017 SEN2 update, "Placement of children with a Statement or EHC Plan maintained by each Local Authority". The denominator data is collected from the ONS mid-year population statistics from age 0 - age 19, where we use the values from preceding year as the denominator values. Statistics from Black & Norwich (2014) are included to cover years 2011 and 2013.

For further details, please refer to our publication (forthcoming) andother online materials (forthcoming).

Using the web application

The web application has three functionalities:

  1. Interactive map: geographical distribution of rates of segregation at local authority level.

  2. Trends over time: changes in rates of segregation from year to year.

  3. LA Ranking: the annual ranking of local authorities according to rates of segregation.

Interactive map

The interactive map section displays the geographical distribution of rates of segregation at local authority level, including colour-coding for ease of reference.

Display panel

The display panel on the left of the map displays the currently selected year and type of school, as well as the information regarding the currently selected local authority.

Input options

The interactive map is rendered according to two inputs: year and type of school. Users can switch to a specific year and a specific type of school to view the geographical distribution of rates of segregation among local authorities.

LA information

The local authority information section displays two density plots: 1) the annual distribution of inclusive measure as well as 2) the distribution of changes in inclusive measure from last available year. The specific values of an LA’s measure are reported above the plots and their places in the distributions are shown in the plots for comparing the local authority and its peers.

LA Ranking

The LA ranking section displays the lists of local authorities according to the percentage of pupils placed in each type of school. By default, when the “i) special schools” is select as the type of school, the local authorities are ranked by percentage (from lowest to highest). When other types of school are selected, the local authorities are listed alphabetically. This behaviour of ranking can be overridden by clicking the header in each column of the table.

Input options

Similar to the interactive map, two options are available for the ranking table: type of school, and year. Users can also select to display the row number, for easier reference to the ranking order of each local authority, and to see information on the City of London and Isles of Scilly, the two local authorities excluded from this analysis due to their small population size.