Welcome to the Summer 2024 edition of the Isos Partnership newsletter. We’re delighted to bring you up to speed with the work we’ve been doing since the spring, and to share some of the things we have in the pipeline.

If you want to chat to us about anything featured in this edition, or to engage with the discussions we’re having as a team, we’d love to hear from you.

Reports

Last week we published a landmark report on the future of the SEND system, which sets out the scale of the challenges facing the system, the root causes of those challenges, and a vision of what an effective approach - focused on inclusion and support for additional needs - would look like. The report was covered in The Independent, The Guardian and the FT.

Ben published a blog summarising our findings and recommendations, and we’ll be releasing a series of follow-up blogs on specific themes identified in the report in the coming months, including pieces on the growth in autism, gender and age differences in the cohort with identified SEND, and the establishment of teams of multi-disciplinary specialists to provide targeted support for young people with SEND in mainstream settings.

You can see all of our recent publications here.

Talking about our work

• Ben presented the findings and recommendations from our report on the future of the SEND system at a range of events in July, including the ADCS Annual Conference, the LGA Children’s Improvement Board and Westminster Education Forum.

• Jodie posted a blog summarising our emerging thinking on childcare’s middle tier as the expansion of funded places gathers pace. Her comment piece in Nursery World expanded on the crucial role local authorities need to play in knitting together childcare provision with wider state support for families.

What we’re working on

• Our work supporting the LocalED project entered its third year. We brought together nine school-led partnerships and LAs who are piloting new models of locality-based governance and partnership at an event in June, to share successes and develop plans for sustaining the work into 2025. We’re now beginning preparations for a January conference to share the outcomes of the programme with a wide range of stakeholders.

• We began a new project with Portsmouth Education Partnership, helping them to review their Ordinarily Available Provision and the way they self-evaluate inclusive practice across the city’s schools.

• We’re continuing to work with the Council for Disabled Children on the What Works in SEND programme, compiling an evidence base of effective practice in local SEND systems. We recently published a resource on the enablers of improvement in local SEND systems, drawing together emerging insights from the programme. CDC have just published the first issue of the What Works in SEND newsletter, which is a great way to keep up to speed with the programme.

• We’re conducting an independent review of the Manchester Special School Partnership, to assess the impact and value-for-money of the model and develop recommendations for its future development.

• We’re helping Southwark Council reshape their education service to better respond to the challenges facing schools and their communities. We’re also supporting them to think through future options for their Adult Learning Service.

• We continue to support Thrive at Five as their learning partner, helping them to develop a playbook of their place-based model of supporting children in their early years.

On the horizon

As the dust settles on the general election, the policies outlined in Labour’s manifesto and the plans set out in the King’s Speech give a clear picture of the new government’s initial priorities. We were really pleased to see a number of proposals emerging from our past research featured in the new Children’s Wellbeing Bill, including a register of children not in school (which we recommended in our 2020 Children missing education report for the LGA) and new LA powers requiring all schools to cooperate on admissions, inclusion and place planning (recommended in our 2022 research report for the DfE).

Our pipeline of research topics engages with some of the key (and often under-explored) issues at the heart of the new government’s policy agenda. Meanwhile, we’re continuing to support clients - existing and new - to reshape and evaluate their services in response to current priorities and challenges.

Themes we’re looking to tackle in the coming months include:

• What does an inclusive school look like?

• How can registers of children not educated full-time in school support our understanding of off-rolling practices?

• What are the drivers and consequences of rising levels of SEND in the early years, and how should the sector respond?

• How can local authorities best deliver integrated early help?

Get in touch

If you want to follow up on anything we’ve covered in this edition of the newsletter, or discuss some ideas we might be able to help with, we’d love to hear from you. Or feel free to reach out to an individual member of the team. In the meantime, we hope you manage to get a well-earned break over the summer!