Sharing Student Projects

This project aimed to explore whether there are relationships between the information that mainstream secondary schools produce about their cultures and values in their ethos statements, and the choices that parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) make when choosing secondary schools for their child. To explore this relationship, parents of upper primary aged children (ages 8-10) with SEND were recruited from a range of English regions. 36 participants were ultimately recruited to the study. Participants completed an online survey which required them to rate ethos statements for five English mainstream secondary schools, based on their individual impressions of their inclusiveness for learners with SEND. Participants were also required to rate their likelihood of selecting that school based on this information. Participants provided their ratings for these using a five-point scale and were also given the opportunity to provide text responses to detail the reasons for their ratings. The existing research literature exploring factors influencing school choices of parents of children with SEND is relatively sparse. Many of these studies originate from outside of the United Kingdom, and although relevant, they do not account for factors unique to the context in England. Most studies have used research methods focused on descriptions and observations and have not collected numeric data which would allow analysis of the relationships between influencing factors and parents’ choices. Existing studies have also lacked a theoretical framework to interpret findings. This study collected numeric data which allowed statistical analysis techniques to be used to explore the relationships between parents’ ethos ratings and their likelihood of choosing specific schools. Findings were framed in the context of Ecological Systems Theory (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006), which explores the development and behaviour of individuals in the context of how they encounter, and are influenced by, different systems throughout their lives. The results of the study showed that parental ratings of ethos statements strongly predicted their likelihood of choosing a school. These findings are supported by previous studies which have shown that parents of children with SEND consider factors such as ethos, values, and culture when choosing schools for their children, although the relationship between these factors and their eventual choices were not tested in these prior studies. Evidence from this study indicates that parental views on the inclusiveness of secondary school ethos statements are significant factors in the decisions they make about school choices for children with SEND. To the best of the researcher’s knowledge, this study is the first to demonstrate this relationship statistically. Findings have implications for inclusion policy at the school and national levels, and for parents of children with SEND.

The results of this study have implications for inclusion policy in England. Political bodies have highlighted concerns about lack of equitability in SEND provision (House of Commons Education Committee, 2019; OFSTED, 2021), and the Department for Education have expressed concerns about disparities in schools’ inclusive practices (Booth, 2024), and are considering review and reform of national SEND policy more widely (ITV News, 2024; Phillipson, 2024; Weale, 2024). The findings of this study show that through their ethos statements, schools communicate different messages about their culture and values regarding their inclusivity of pupils with SEND. This has an impact upon the school choices of parents of children with SEND, and may further reinforce disparities in inclusive practice and inequitable variations in SEND populations within individual schools. This has psychological, moral, financial, and policy implications at several levels and has consequences for a range of stakeholders, including national government, local authorities, school leaders, teaching and support staff, parents, and children. The current focus on review of SEND policy, funding, and provision would benefit from considering how historic reforms to education policy have interacted with SEND policy, creating tension between the standards and inclusion agendas which has resulted in the inequities observed in mainstream schools under the current SEND system. Placing inclusion and SEND within the remit of the Schools Minister (Whittaker, 2024) is an encouraging first step towards beginning to acknowledge this tension between SEND policy and wider school and education systems. The results of this study show that not all schools portray themselves to be equally inclusive, and that their culture and ethos can appear off-putting and exclusionary to parents of children with SEND. If the current SEND crisis is to be resolved, it will be necessary to consider such factors to improve the inclusiveness of school offers and perhaps more crucially, in improving the lived experiences of SEND families.