Blog
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Hiring a Data Analyst
Mastodon C is working with local authorities to ensure better outcomes for children with special educational needs and disabilities and for looked after children. We help them achieve this while ensuring they can secure the budgets they need and help as many people as possible with the money they have. We’re looking for someone who […]
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Need to write a robust Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) deficit management plan? We are here to help
The Department for Education (DfE) in England are reducing the flexibilities available to local authorities to cover DSG overspends, such as from the high needs block, from other education budgets. Local authorities facing an overspend or significantly reduced surpluses are going to be required by DfE to complete a recovery plan template, which expects robust […]
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Trends in SEND February 2021
We have a lot of conversations with people about their SEND systems. Here are some of the things we’ve been noticing recently and can help you with. Get in touch Covid means that referral numbers are up/down/other but different than before How can we reduce the need to send children to schools in other local […]
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Why strategic place planning matters to a special school headteacher
Dr Matthew Rayner was a senior leader at Stephen Hawking School in London for over twenty years, including being headteacher from 2007 to the end of 2019. It is an outstanding school for children aged 2 to 11 years of age with profound and multiple learning difficulties and complex needs. Mastodon C talked to Matthew […]
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Supporting children with special educational needs and disabilities – a system under pressure
Some reflections by Chris Owen, our education and children’s services associate, about the factors that are exerting pressure on high needs funding, which are making it even harder to achieve a ‘level playing field’ for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) in England. Mainstream schools’ funding is under pressure Schools’ accountability is predominantly […]
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Analysing special educational needs and disability: strategic engagement from the beginning
To complement our core special educational needs and disability (SEND) modelling service, we can provide additional strategic advice and support. In this post Chris Owen, our education and children’s services associate, describes how a facilitated workshop with your SEND strategic leaders can help to clarify your priorities and prepare the ground for strategic planning informed […]
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Mastodon C’s purpose and direction
Mastodon C builds tools that enable people who plan for Special Education, Alternative Provision, and Children’s Social Care to design services that deliver better outcomes for children and young people, while making the best use of the resources available. The people we work with are already experts in delivering these services and we enable them […]
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Tackling the additional SEND pressures from new court rulings
Two recent articles in The Independent highlighted the increasing trend for Local Authorities to be challenged by the courts to justify the way they fund and manage their SEND provision. This made us here at Mastodon C think about ways in which our Witan SEND model can be used to help authorities when judgements are […]
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Utilising Open SEN2 data with our Witan SEND Model
Since our release of Version 1.0 of our SEND model back at the beginning of the year, we’ve been hard at work looking at other places we can apply our model. One of Mastodon C’s core principles is being open source, and so we turned to open data! Our full model takes a local […]
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The top three SEND policy scenarios
In our recent work with UK local authorities using our SEND model to support their understanding of future demand, and setting strategies to handle that demand, we have had a lot of conversations about what types of strategies they want to explore. While our initial work is focused on setting an accurate baseline projection, this […]
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