School A and School B are similar mainstream schools, desperate to hang on to their SENDCO.
They both give their SENDCO adequate time to do the role, pay them a respectable TLR and provide them with a number of TAs for support. They both make them part of the school’s SLT and even offer some flexible working opportunities for their wellbeing.
School A’s SENDCO stays in post, thriving in the role and driving outcomes for pupils with SEND.
School B’s SENDCO leaves, setting the school’s provision back and setting off a lengthy recruitment process.
The difference? A recent experience sheds light on the answer.
Understanding SENDCO retention
In a recent CPD day for MAT SEND leaders organised by Whole Education, 40 such colleagues were asked: Which are the most important factors that support SENDCO retention?
The respondents chose from the following options, also adding some of their own: Salary, time, seniority, relationship with the LA, workload, professional growth and development opportunities, number of TAs, quality of line management support, school culture around inclusion and flexible working
Everyone in the room had been a SENDCO and either still was or was working closely with SENDCOs in their day-to-day practice. The MATs they work in cover around 600 schools, including some of the largest.
Each colleague had 5 votes which they could use flexibly, for example by putting multiple votes against one factor if they felt strongly about it.
One factor attracted almost three times as many votes as any other: The school culture around inclusion, including from the head.
It’s a small dataset, but it suggests an interesting hypothesis with consequences that go far beyond the reach of a SENDCO.
A whole-school culture of inclusion
It’s about what happens across the school. A headteacher can give a SENDCO time and pay them well. But if they don’t feel listened to they are much more likely to leave. Your SENDCO can join SLT, but if they don’t feel they can effect change you won’t hang on to them. And no matter how many TAs support them, if wider staff mindsets aren’t inclusive it’s a poor investment.
Schools that work well for pupils with SEND are about much more than the experience, expertise or effectiveness of the SENDCO. Inclusive schools live and breathe a culture in which everyone (particularly every leader, but everyone) considers the needs of pupils with SEND with each decision they make.
When a school leader reflects on the effectiveness of the school behaviour policy, when a teacher considers how they will teach an upcoming lesson or when a teaching assistant plans well for an intervention, they think about those pupils. When the designated safeguarding lead reviews cases, when the midday supervisors serve lunches or when the history lead prepares curriculum materials, they think about those pupils.
And as with so much school practice, that is most effective when it’s driven by the headteacher.
Holding on to a good SENDCO
Three years ago, nasen’s national survey found that 12 per cent of SENDCOs leave their role each year and only 40 per cent plan to be working as a SENDCO in five years’ time. Meanwhile, SEND registers increase in size year-on-year and more pupils with more complex needs are attending mainstream schools. A shortage of SENDCOs is something education can ill-afford.
It’s true that some will leave the SENDCO role for promotion – to SLT, headship, a MAT or local authority SEND leader or adviser role. But it’s also clear that many are finding the SENDCO role at best challenging, or at worst unmanageable.
The hundreds of SENDCO vacancies published on teaching websites attest to the fact that we still have much to do to ensure the SENDCO role is desirable in the first place, let alone one someone might want to stay in.
Perhaps that’s because it’s not valued highly enough and perhaps it’s just innately too hard. But pay isn’t the only way to signify value, and if everyone around a SENDCO embraced what their job represents, then perhaps we’ll find we had the solution all along.
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