The future of professional development for SENCos: Will it equip them for strategic leadership?

Back in May 2022 Inclusion Now 62 published Louise Arnold and Debbie Kilbride’s article “The SEND Review Green Paper: Never giving up and never letting go, despite a system in crisis”. This explored the proposed replacement of the National Award for SEN Co-ordination (NASENCo) with a National Professional Qualification (NPQ) as the mandatory qualification for SENCos in England.

The proposal has since been formalised in the SEND and Alternative Provision Improvement Plan (Department for Education 2023) and the new NPQ is due to be introduced in Autumn 2024. With such significant changes afoot, this article draws on our recent research (Richards, Brewster, Knowler and Done, 2023) and asks whether the new training can fully equip SENCos for what is a challenging and complex role (Done et al. 2022).

Like the SEND Code of Practice (2015) the 2023 Plan identifies that every teacher should be able to adapt their practice to meet the needs of every child in their classroom. It also identifies the importance of Initial Teacher Training and Early Career Frameworks to better equip teachers to meet the needs of Disabled children and Young people. However, our experience and research have identified tensions around teachers’ perceptions of ‘every teacher a teacher of SEND’ and the specialist roles of a SENCo.

Of even greater concern is that this reform is not presenting existing definitions of inclusive education which recognise the centrality of Disabled people’s experiences.  Furthermore, there is no mention of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) which in turn directly ignores Disabled children and Young people’s education as a human right.  The Plan effectively promotes segregated education and fails to support the collaborative professionalism essential to enacting fully inclusive education.

SENCOs and leadership

SENCo practice is multi-faceted and entails dilemmas and challenges associated with leadership. Whilst we welcome the Plan’s intention to support excellent SEND leadership, SENCos enacting their advocacy role must sometimes navigate discriminatory and/or exclusionary practices. The drivers for these are often both financial and related to academic results.  We are concerned that the NPQ may depart from the critically rigorous requirements of the existing NASENCO and that this poses risks to equipping SENCos with the necessary resources for agency to ensure inclusive school cultures and to challenge unfair practices.

SENCos have a critical leadership role to play, not just for Disabled learners but for inclusion in its widest sense. The outgoing National Award equipped SENCos with Masters-level research skills which aimed to enable inclusion-related research at the school level and so facilitate transformatory evidence-based practice. Like Lopes et al (2023), we recognise the interconnection of knowledge, skills and agency and the power that transformative learning can have to drive these. Whilst we are mindful of the very real contexts and constraints SENCos operate in, we also recognise they play a pivotal role in social justice. But in the words of one of our NASENCo students, the NPQ must continue to equip SENCos to “champion the needs of SEND children in all curriculum areas”, and to continue to do what is right rather than what is easy.

SENCo practice is shaped by wider historical, political, legislative and ideological discourses and by the local manifestations it is positioned within. As university tutors delivering the existing course, we investigated what impact NASENCo students felt Masters-level study had on their professional practice (Richards, Brewster, Knowler and Done, 2023). Our research revealed the most important benefits SENCO students felt they gained from doing the course were:

• Growing confidence, for example to challenge, question, engage critically with senior leadership and outside agencies and parents/carers/families. This confidence then directly supported their potential career development.
• Growing research literacy, to support their engagement with evidence of effective practice and embed evidence-informed practices in their settings.

Students working across a range of setting types and age phases demonstrated their willingness to delve deeper into the issues they face within their settings. Many showed their growing insight into the causes of underachievement and the role of evaluation in looking at the efficacy of interventions within their schools.  What was also evident was their growing awareness of how theory could improve their understanding, and of how tools taught on the course could improve teaching and learning through the professional development of staff in their settings.  While no qualification will guarantee effective enactment of the SENCO role – building accountability into the system is needed to do this – it was apparent that the outgoing course did indeed support participants’ deep critical engagement with inclusive educational practice.

SENCOs as leaders of inclusion

Tronto (2013) argues that organisations (like schools) should be alert to situations where it is possible for some people not to care about issues of inclusion. SENCos need to be confident members of leadership teams that hold inclusive practice as a core ethos across their whole setting and staff.  SENCOs can do much to promote knowledge and skills in support of inclusive education among their staff groups when given the time and space to do so.

How the new NPQ will succeed in equipping SENCos with the insight, skills and confidence to challenge unjust practice and champion inclusion remains to be seen.  Indeed, a change in course title and format of the mandatory training may make no difference to SENCOs’ personal commitment to social justice, and the demonstration of this through their leadership. Whilst we accept this situation is where we are at, we issue a call for continued vigilance as training providers develop their NPQ courses, to retain as far as possible the many strengths of the old NASENCO in the pursuit of improved outcomes for Disabled children and Young people.

And finally…

… a message to SENCOs at whatever stage of professional development they are at, in the words of Knowler, Richards and Brewster (2023, p117):

“We recognise your commitment to removing barriers to learning, advocating for, and supporting parents and families as they negotiate the SEND systems, and for showing that an inclusive system where diverse classrooms with learners from all backgrounds can learn and thrive together is possible.”

More:

• Done, E L, Knowler, H, Richards, H and Brewster, S (2022) Advocacy leadership or the de-professionalising of the Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator role? British Journal of Special Education.[Online at: Advocacy leadership and the deprofessionalising of the special educational needs co‐ordinator role – Done – 2023 – British Journal of Special Education – Wiley Online Library (accessed 24 July 2023).
• Knowler, H, Richards, H and Brewster, S (Eds) 2023. Developing Your Expertise as a SENCo; Leading Inclusive Practice. St Albans; Critical Publishing.
• Lopes, A., Folque, A., Marta and Tavares de Sousa, R. (2023) Teacher professionalism towards transformative education: insights from a literature review, Professional Development in Education, DOI: 1080/19415257.2023.2235572
• Richards, H, Brewster, S, Knowler, H and Done, E. (2023) Professional development for SENCos (Special Educational Needs Coordinators): the future of an accredited National Award. European Conference on Educational Research, August, University of Glasgow.
• Tronto, J. C. (2013) Caring Democracy: Markets, Equality, and Justice. New York: NYU Press