Our recommendations

Our recommendations are listed in the order that they appear in the text of this report. They encourage the Ministry to continue to implement and monitor changes that it has told us it is making. The changes seek to address issues of consistency in allocation of resources, monitoring the support the Ministry provides to students, and monitoring students' progress.

Determining the level of need

We recommend that the Ministry of Education:

1. further improve the quality of, routinely analyse, and report information about the overall level of need for support, to inform policy decisions about resourcing its four initiatives for students with high special educational needs.

Providing guidance, and assessing applications and referrals for support

We recommend that the Ministry of Education:

2. provide clearer information about the intensity and type of need required for a student to be eligible for the Ongoing and Reviewable Resourcing Schemes;
3. ensure that its staff consistently provide applicants to the Ongoing and Reviewable Resourcing Schemes with enough advice to ensure that applications are completed properly;
4. ensure that all district offices follow consistent protocols for reviewing Severe Behaviour Initiative and Speech Language Initiative assessment decisions when applications have been declined; and
5. ensure that district staff provide consistent information and advice about the other support options available to students who are not eligible for the four initiatives.

Allocating resources for supporting students

We recommend that the Ministry of Education:

6. ensure, through its National Moderation Plan, the consistency and appropriateness of its approach to moderating teacher aide hours for students supported through the Ongoing and Reviewable Resourcing Schemes and the School High Health Needs Fund;
7. implement and monitor its standard timeframes for allocating funding and resources for all four initiatives, to ensure that all students receive support in a timely manner;
8. further improve and regularly check the integrity of the data held in its national reporting and work outputs database; and
9. actively review and manage districts where staff capacity to provide support services is not meeting the demand for services.

Monitoring the support for, and progress of, students

We recommend that the Ministry of Education:

10. improve its systems to gather and aggregate information about the effectiveness of its support for students.