Much SEND provision will be highly personalised to the needs of the child. This can make impact measurement challenging, particularly when pupils may not be accessing the mainstream curriculum or assessments. Ultimately, this makes extra work for teachers which may not always add benefit to pupils.

ImpactEd Evaluation helps schools to define the outcomes of their SEND provision and map high-quality assessment tools to measure those, whether attainment, wellbeing, attendance or other outcomes. Our national database of assessment measures for social and emotional skills such as pupil motivation, wellbeing, self-efficacy and meta-cognition helps our partner schools compare their pupils’ perceptions to national benchmarks. This helps schools to assess the impact of their offer in a holistic way and simplifies reporting to parents, governors and other stakeholders.

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Understanding the whole-school impact of SEN and nurture provision

ImpactEd Evaluation began working with Bengeworth CE Primary Academy in 2018. The school had already used internally developed assessments to assess provision, including a social skills and oracy programme (Talk About), synthetic phonics (Dancing Bears) and development of metacognitive skills (Top Dog). However, the bespoke nature of these assessments meant comparing impact between programmes was challenging. ImpactEd Evaluation addressed this by matching high-quality pupil assessment measures for motivation, meta-cognition and self-efficacy, alongside drawing on existing data from their school MIS. Results are automated and reported through the School Impact Platform.

Several years into the partnership...

• A range of different support programmes and projects are now consistently tracked and evaluated across the school
• This strategy has been extended across the new Bengeworth Multi-Academy Trust. This has enabled shared impact data between the schools and cross-school comparisons to clearly see what is working most effectively within different contexts.
• 37 staff members in total across the Trust are actively engaged with this process and use the results to inform provision.

The impact of this approach was profiled as part of a national report from the Centre for Education and Youth on innovative assessment practice and contributed to Bengeworth being awarded Flagship status for Inclusion Quality Mark - one of only around 100 schools in the country to hold this status.

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David Coaché, Executive Headteacher, commented:

“ From our perspective working with ImpactEd Evaluation provides access to a wider bank of comparative data that has never been available before, but is integral in ensuring an evidence-based approach to teaching.”

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