: Beyond the Staffing Ratio: Are SEND Support Hours Reaching the Pupils Who Need Them Most? Beyond the Staffing Ratio: Are SEND Support Hours Reaching the Pupils Who Need Them Most?
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Beyond the Staffing Ratio: Are SEND Support Hours Reaching the Pupils Who Need Them Most?
Beyond the Staffing Ratio: Are SEND Support Hours Reaching the Pupils Who Need Them Most?
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by Essex Research School
on the
Don Wry
ELE and CEO and Accounting Officer at Hearts Academy Trust
Schools devote considerable expertise, time and funding to supporting pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Quite rightly so.
Yet despite all that effort and investment, one deceptively simple question can be surprisingly difficult to answer: Are the right pupils receiving the right support, at the right time, and is that support making a meaningful difference?
Most school and trust leaders can tell you how many support staff they employ. They can probably calculate the cost per pupil, the proportion of budget allocated to staffing and the ratio of support hours to pupils on roll.
I wanted further clarity and precision on whether those hours were consistently reaching the pupils who needed them most and whether they were improving learning, participation and outcomes.
1. Pupils with SEND have the greatest need for excellent teaching. 2. Additional support should complement high quality teaching rather than replace it. 3. Leaders should develop an ongoing and holistic understanding of pupils and their needs in order to make effective decisions about provision. The EEF’s more recent Guide to Inclusive Teaching reinforces this further, reminding us that additional support can help or hinder learning and therefore needs to be monitored carefully over time.
For those of us working within the EEF Guidance, these ideas are familiar. The challenge is often not understanding the evidence itself, but understanding whether our systems, structures and deployment decisions truly reflect that evidence in practice.
That challenge became the starting point for a piece of research I undertook across HEARTS Academy Trust.
It did not begin with an elaborate research question or a new framework in mind. It began with me looking at one of our existing staffing KPIs and asking a much simpler question: Does this KPI still fit our Trust and work for our pupils?
The Question Behind the Ratio
At HEARTS, we had historically used a benchmark of 0.75 classroom support hours per pupil per week. It provided a useful measure of staffing capacity and helped us compare schools of different sizes. We used it to inform recruitment decisions, consider budget allocation and understand workforce pressures.
As a financial KPI, it worked well. The problem was not that it was inaccurate. The problem was that I had started asking it to answer questions it was never designed to answer.
A staffing ratio can tell leaders how much support capacity exists within a school. It cannot tell us whether support is reaching the pupils with the greatest need. It cannot tell us whether provision remains aligned to current needs. Most importantly, it cannot tell us whether deployment decisions are contributing to better outcomes for pupils.
The more I explored the KPI, the more questions it generated…
One school could sit comfortably within the benchmark and still struggle to demonstrate impact. Another could sit above it for entirely legitimate reasons because of the complexity of its cohort. A relatively lean staffing model could be highly effective where support was carefully targeted. A more generously staffed model could still lack alignment.
Eventually, I reached a simple conclusion: A staffing ratio describes capacity. It does not, on its own, describe need, deployment or impact!
Once I recognised that, the questions changed.
EEF Effective Deployment of Teaching Assistants.
When the Timetable Told a Different Story
This thinking crystallised during a detailed review of one of our largest and most complex schools. On paper, the school appeared generously staffed. It sat comfortably above our benchmark and significant resources had been committed to supporting pupils with SEND. Yet leaders quite rightly felt stretched and were calling for additional staffing to meet growing levels of need. So we looked beneath the numbers. We analysed support staff timetables, mapped staffing hours against pupil need and reviewed the provision pupils were expected to receive.
The picture changed…
The issue was not commitment. Staff were working incredibly hard and leaders were doing everything they could to respond to increasing complexity. However, over time, deployment had become stretched across multiple competing priorities.
Some pupils with moderate needs were receiving considerable levels of support, while several pupils with more complex needs were receiving less consistent provision than their profiles suggested. In short, the hours existed. They were simply not always landing where we thought they were.
As we looked more closely at deployment patterns, another phenomenon emerged. We began referring to it as support drift. Support drift does not happen because of poor leadership or a lack of care. It develops gradually.
A timetable changes to solve an immediate issue. A colleague takes on another responsibility. A pupil needs short-term support. A temporary arrangement remains in place longer than intended.
Each decision makes perfect sense at the time. Collectively, however, they can move provision away from the pupils and priorities it was originally designed to support.
Looking back, support drift struck me as an implementation challenge as much as a staffing challenge.
The EEF’s implementation guidance encourages leaders to view implementation as an ongoing process of reflection, monitoring and adaptation rather than a one-off event. Schools rightly monitor budgets and staffing levels. We should be equally disciplined about reviewing whether support remains aligned with need and having the intended impact.
Better Questions for SEND Leaders
The most valuable outcome from this work was not a new KPI. It was a better set of questions. Schools already hold much of the information they need through provision maps, support staff timetables and pupil progress records.
Leaders might begin by asking:
• Are our highest-need pupils receiving the provision identified for them? • Does additional support genuinely complement high quality teaching? • Are teaching assistants being deployed in ways that promote participation, learning and independence? • How much planned support is being diverted into wider operational responsibilities? • What evidence shows that support is improving learning, independence and progress?
These questions move the conversation beyond staffing numbers and towards impact!
Better Questions, Better Decisions
Schools invest substantial resources in additional support because they want pupils with SEND to thrive.
Our responsibility as leaders is not simply to account for what we spend. It is to understand whether support is reaching the pupils who need it most, whether it remains aligned to current need and whether it is improving outcomes.
Financial KPIs remain important. However, staffing ratios alone are no longer enough.
The aim is not more data. It is better questions, clearer decisions and more purposeful support for pupils.
This work has not stopped with the research itself. The findings have since informed the development of the HEARTS SEND Deployment Framework and the SEND Efficiency Index (SEI), both of which were designed to help leaders better understand the relationship between pupil need, staffing deployment and outcomes.
The full research paper, including the methodology, case studies and underpinning metrics, is available to read in full here. Since its publication, the framework has also been developed into a practical digital tool through SEND.School, enabling schools and trusts to bring together staffing, pupil need and progress information in a way that supports more informed decision making.
Whilst the principles explored in this article do not depend on any particular platform, readers interested in exploring the research or its practical application can find further information by clicking the referred to links.
Key Takeaways
• Staffing ratios measure capacity, not the quality or impact of deployment. • Additional support should build on strong universal teaching and connect clearly with classroom learning. • Support drift can develop gradually, even where staff are working hard and provision appears generous. • Deployment should be considered alongside pupil need and meaningful progress. • Monitoring works best as a sustained, collaborative leadership process rather than a one-off audit.
