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The placement of secondary school students with S tatements of special educational needs in the more diversified system of E nglish secondary schooling
Author(s) -
Norwich Brahm,
Black Alison
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
british journal of special education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.349
H-Index - 38
eISSN - 1467-8578
pISSN - 0952-3383
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8578.12097
Subject(s) - special educational needs , special education , special needs , mathematics education , secondary education , psychology , pedagogy , medical education , sociology , medicine , psychiatry
This article examines the pattern of placement of students with significant special educational needs at S tatement and S chool A ction P lus levels in E nglish secondary schools, comparing sponsored and converter academies, maintained schools and the newly created free schools, studio schools and university technical colleges for 2013 and 2014. The analysis shows a clear pattern of differences: converter academies (which are governed by their own governing body) had significantly lower proportions of students with significant special educational needs overall than maintained (those remaining under local authority management) and sponsored academies (those considered to be weak/failing schools forced to become academies with outside sponsors that oversee the schools). There was a similar pattern of findings for most areas of special educational needs, except visual impairment and autistic spectrum disorder. The pattern of placement of students with S tatements in the newly created free schools also showed that some free schools have unusually high proportions of students with special educational needs. These findings are discussed in terms of the increasing stratification of E nglish secondary schools and the potential of small secondary schools to be more inclusive.