During the spring and summer term 2024 an Estyn inspector with experience in supporting learners with additional learning needs (ALN) joined link inspector visits to all further education (FE) colleges across Wales. During each visit, they met with key staff to discuss ALN reform1 and how implementation was progressing in each college. The findings of these visits informed this report.
The ALN Act and wider ALN Transformation Programme aims to transform the separate systems for special educational needs (SEN) in schools or pupil referral units (PRUs) and learning difficulties and/or disabilities (LDD) in further education to create a unified system for supporting learners from 0 to 25 with ALN.
Overall, colleges reported that they are at varying stages in implementation of the ALN act. Further, each college was supporting different cohorts with a varying range of additional learning needs. For example, most colleges supported learners with more complex additional learning needs on independent living skills courses and a minority had an established strong relationship with an independent specialist college to enhance provision in partnership.
Nearly all the colleges we visited reported an increase in learners with ALN as well as mental health and anxiety-based difficulties since the pandemic. In addition, a few colleges reported an increase in learners joining who were previously home-educated and so there is limited information available about any additional learning needs.
Many of these colleges ran multiple types of provision which were impacted by the ALN reforms where learners are on the roll of the college. These included Jobs Growth Wales+, youth employability programmes and junior apprenticeships2. In a few instances, provision for more complex learners, typically registered as independent specialist colleges, was initially delivered through a mainstream college before the subsidiary institution registers with the Welsh Government.
These arrangements were further complicated by the geography of Wales. Nearly all colleges needed to build relationships and develop information sharing with more than one local authority. A very few also developed information sharing arrangements with English local authorities. Colleges also reported variability in their relationships with local secondary schools based on whether they were the main provider of tertiary education in that area.
We completed our first thematic report of ALN reforms in September 2023, which focused on implementation of the ALNET Act in schools and local authorities. While the focus of the review did not include post-16 settings, we did leave one recommendation for local authorities in relation to post-16: to develop and publish their strategy for post-16 learners with ALN.
Within the 2023 ALN thematic report, we found that local authority strategies for post-16 ALN provision are at a very early stage of development. Those local authorities that had appointed dedicated post-16 officers reported that they were developing stronger strategic partnerships with further education providers. The knowledge that local authorities had of independent specialist colleges was less secure, and consequently their engagement with them was more limited. As a result, local authorities were not able to make informed decisions about the full range of additional learning provision across the post-16 sectors.