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Special Educational Needs and Disabilities within the English primary school system: what can disproportionalities by season of birth contribute to understanding processes behind attributions and (lack of) provisions?

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  • Campbell, Tammy

Abstract

This working paper uses de-identified National Pupil Database records spanning 2008 – 2018 (N children=6 million+) to map disproportionalities by birth season and gender in attributions of levels of Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SENDs) and ascriptions of SEND types. It also maps disparities in attribution to Reception children of an Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP) ‘Good Level of Development’ and to Year 1 children the status of ‘meeting expectations’ in the Phonics Screening Check. It lays the foundation for more detailed work towards understanding the processes behind birth month disproportionalities in attributions of SENDs, and implications of these for the function of the school and SEND systems. Summer-born children, particularly boys, are much more likely to be attributed both ‘higher’ and ‘lower’-level SEND by the end of their primary school career, and there are also stark inequalities in the types of SEND ascribed to boys and girls born across the year. Alongside this, there are extremely pronounced disparities by birth season and gender in EYFSP and Phonics screening assessments at the beginning of primary school. In the context of findings here, previous research and theory, and indications of a widening over time in gaps between autumn-born girls and summer-born boys, this paper hypothesises that rigid, prescriptive ‘expectations’ and ‘standards’ within the primary education system result in summer-born children disproportionately being denoted with SEND: and that therefore to some extent the system produces – and then fails to meet – the needs of children with SEND. The current SEND system is characterised as riddled with ‘nightmares’ and ‘dashed hopes’ (House of Commons Education Committee, 2019); this paper begins to contribute to scrutinising the workings of the system overall and factors that produce inequalities, inefficiencies, insufficiencies.

Suggested Citation

  • Campbell, Tammy, 2021. "Special Educational Needs and Disabilities within the English primary school system: what can disproportionalities by season of birth contribute to understanding processes behind attributions and (lac," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 121529, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:121529
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    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/121529/
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Claire Crawford & Lorraine Dearden & Ellen Greaves, 2014. "The drivers of month-of-birth differences in children's cognitive and non-cognitive skills," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 177(4), pages 829-860, October.
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    relative age effects; special educational needs; disability; primary education; inequalities; Postdoctoral Fellowship; under Grant [PF2 180019];
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General

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