Every Child Matters? An Evaluation of 'Special Educational Needs' Programmes in England

Effects of a French remedial program on pupils’ educational outcomes

“…Indeed, we can assume that these teachers are less experienced in classroom management. Studies by Keslair et al (2012) and Lavy and Schlosser (2005) were not able to provide significant evidence of either of these effects. Our data, which reflect only a sample of students from each class, do not allow us test the total effects of this program corresponding to both participating pupils and the other pupils in the same class.…”

“…This is notably the case for the English program "Special Educational Needs," where each school determines which pupils are in difficulty and then resources of school budget are allocated for this pupils, who can put into place, depending on the nature of the student difficulties, individual assistance either within the class with the teacher or with a support teacher, or with an external specialist. Keslair, Maurin, and McNally (2012) attempted to evaluate this type of program. First of all, the authors show that the decentralization of decision-making to the school level causes the decision of whether a pupil will benefit from the program or not to depend on the scholastic level of the other pupils in the school.…”

Estimating returns to special education: combining machine learning and text analysis to address confounding

“…Even though I observe the assignment process in its entirety through written reports, some factors influencing SpEd placements might still remain unobserved. I address this issue by leveraging the variation in school supply of programs as an instrument to compare the outcomes of SEN students in inclusive settings with similar peers in semi-segregated settings (in the spirit of Keslair, Maurin, and McNally, 2012). Following the Swiss Equality Act for People with Disabilities (2004), municipalities in St. Gallen were strongly encouraged to implement inclusive SpEd programs instead of segregated ones.…”

“…3 Despite the increasing number of students with SEN and the push to implement inclusive education, evidence on how special education (SpEd) placements -and inclusive placements in particular -affect academic and labor market returns of students with SEN is scarce. Existing research shows inconclusive effects of SpEd on academic performance (Hanushek, Kain, and Rivkin, 2002;Lavy and Schlosser, 2005;Keslair, Maurin, and McNally, 2012;Schwartz, Hopkins, and Stiefel, 2021) and on educational attainment (Ballis and Heath, forthcoming). Since early interventions in children's school curricula have a profound impact on children's academic and lifelong prospects (see among others Cappelen et al, 2020;Heckman, Pinto, and Savelyev, 2013;Duncan and Magnuson, 2013;Chetty et al, 2011;Heckman et al, 2010), it is crucial to provide teachers, parents, psychologists and policy makers with insights on which SpEd programs are effective.…”

“…Given that SpEd is usually a multifaceted intervention with programs that differ in quality and intensity, these studies fail to provide insights into the effectiveness of different types of programs. 5 Studies have shown moderate effectiveness of SpEd programs on the academic performance of SEN students (Schwartz, Hopkins, and Stiefel, 2021;Keslair, Maurin, and McNally, 2012;Harrison et al, 2013;Lavy and Schlosser, 2005) 6 and positive returns for SEN students with learning and/or emotional disabilities (Hanushek, Kain, and Rivkin, 2002). In addition, evidence on long-term effects of SpEd placements is scant: while Ballis and Heath (forthcoming) find that students experience long-run benefits from SpEd placements, other studies report long-term negative impacts of SpEd.…”