An important part of the cycle is the review of the impact/effectiveness of the support plan. Reviews should be structured and focused and held at least three times a year. 

Collaboration between the school/setting, parents/carers and child or young person, as well as other partners if appropriate, is key to an effective review. It’s important to establish a shared, accurate understanding of the impact of support, intervention, adjustments and additional provision. 

Everyone who is involved in the process should decide together: 

  • Whether the SEN support is having a positive impact 
  • Whether the outcomes have been, or are being, achieved 
  • Whether new outcomes need to be identified 
  • Whether support needs to continue or different support needs to be tried 

This specific review stage does not replace the need for ongoing, formative and responsive assessment in real-time. 

Supporting less than expected progress

Where a child or young person continues to make less than expected progress, despite evidence based support and interventions that are matched to their area(s) of need, practitioners should consider involving appropriate specialists. 

This could be health visitors, speech and language therapists, or specialist advisory teachers/support workers. They will be able to help identify effective strategies, equipment, programmes or other interventions to enable the child to make progress towards the desired learning and development outcomes. The decision to involve specialists should be taken with the child or young person’s parents. 

A school’s graduated response should be clearly and accessibly set out in their SEND information report, which must be reviewed and updated annually and published on its website. 

Oxfordshire County Council and Oxfordshire schools have examples and templates to help gather and record information and work with parents/carers to plan outcomes and review progress for children and young people with SEND.