Personalising Communication during Educational Reviews with Children who have Special Educational Needs

Abstract

Current legislation and statutory guidance relating to those identified as having special educational needs (SEN), emphasises the importance of the involvement of children and young people and their families in matters affecting their educational experiences. Due to the heterogeneity of SEN and associated communication difficulties in particular, there may be challenges in successfully eliciting the views of children and young people as part of the annual educational review process. For this study, 61 parent/carer participants from across England responded to an online questionnaire. This was designed firstly to see whether communication methods were differentiated according to the child’s usual or preferred style of communicating, and secondly whether person-centred approaches to facilitate the child’s participation and inclusion had been adopted as part of the process. Correlation analysis found very little evidence of communication methods being differentiated according to usual preferences although there was some evidence of different methods being used during reviews. Further analysis found some evidence that adopting person-centred approaches to educational reviews had a positive effect on overall outcomes for children and young people. It is suggested that future research could seek to capture the perspectives, not only of parents/carers but also of educational practitioners and the children themselves to allow for greater exploration of some of the issues arising in this paper.