Assessing progress in children with severe/profound intellectual disabilities: what are the issues?

Abstract

Capturing and recording progress made in schools by children with severe/profound intellectual disabilities has always been problematic as assessments based on academic subjects are not always achievable or appropriate. To ensure equality with mainstream children, performance (P) levels were introduced by the government to assess children with intellectual disabilities and were utilised on a national level. However, they have recently been criticised by the Rochford Review, and the government has asked special schools to provide their own assessments. This means that, unlike mainstream education, each school have to create their own assessments and possibly a reorganisation of their curriculum. Children in special schools are thus being treated differently to those in typical schools as there are currently no national progress levels for children with severe or profound intellectual disabilities and special schools are unable to ensure that their data is both valid and robust.

Keywords:

• Assessment
• capturing progress
• equality
• special education
• holistic development

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.