“In many areas of public life—including education—the UK [is] a federal state and in key respects had been for many years” (Furlong and Lunt, 2016, p.251). This paper sets out to demonstrate the differing policy approaches taken to the education and schooling practices of children with additional needs in the four home nations of the United Kingdom (UK).  This is particularly timely given the upcoming UK general election.

 Each of the four home nations of the UK – England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales -  have devolved power over education policy. There are, and have been, even prior to devolution, differences in policy in all aspects of education in the four nations (Booth, 1996; Furlong and Lunt, 2016; Knight et al. 2023).  Examples  of policy divergence include: the prevalence of grammar schools in Northern Ireland; the lack of publication of school performance data in Wales; different qualifications in Scotland; approaches to school autonomy in England.  The concept of and policy around additional needs is of a particular interest as two of the home nations have policies to encompass “additional learning needs” (Wales) and “additional support needs” (Scotland).

 In this paper the term “pupils with Additional Needs” is used, in recognition of the different policy approaches to certain pupils taken in each of the home nations, but also to move discussion beyond a focus on children with special educational needs (SEN).  “Additional needs” was used in the 2005 ‘Every Child Matters’ initiative in England (DSCF, 2009) to cover those who are protected by statutory education/care services and those on the edge of these services; this overlaps with the Scottish term “additional support needs” and Welsh term “additional learning needs”, and, in NI only, the term “additional educational needs”, used for those who may face additional barriers to education and learning, beyond SEN.  This paper’s definition – pupils in each of the four nations of the UK who have educational needs beyond that of “normal/typical” children, which means additional educational provision is made for them.

 This paper will set out differences and similarities in policy, examining the legislation and statutory guidance of the different policies. It will report on a pilot which seeks to present how concepts such as “disability”; “additional needs”; “special educational needs” and “vulnerable children” are framed in the different parties manifestoes produced and publicised for the upcoming UK general election (expected by end of 2024).

 It will also describe a project under development to make use of data collection in each of the four home nations to describe the characteristics of this group of children and patterns in who they are and where they go to school.  The first stage of the project will be to map what data are collected and collated by the departments of education in each of the jurisdictions.

 This will result in a comparison of the different policies and data and the impact these might have on the numbers of children labelled as having additional needs.  Such analysis will afford unique opportunities to compare and contrast the impact of different policies on the inclusion and education of children with additional needs, beyond SEN.  It will draw attention to the need to recognise (and critique) the assumption that English policy is synonymous with UK policy (Furlong and Lunt, 2016; Raffe et al 1999), and will help reposition the other home nations to a more central role in policy debate and research (Power, 2016).  It will also be a model for ways of exploring other federal policy variation in international contexts.

This paper will set out the background of a developing study, laying out the context of the study, and outlining its proposed methods. It will present the results of a pilot study which involves documentary analysis of UK political parties’ manifestoes (pending announcement of date of the UKs upcoming general election/publication of manifestoes.) The study under development aims to: • Compare and contrast policy documentation in each of the four home nations of the UK with regards to children with Additional Needs. • Map what data are collected with regards pupils with additional needs by departments responsible for education in each of the four home nations. A discussion of the proposed methods will be presented. These include: Documentary analysis of legislation and briefing papers in each context, building on work of Knight et al (2023) who undertook a critical policy analysis of how the four UK nations articulate and portray their inclusive education policies. The focus of our study will be on pupils with additional needs (rather than inclusion). The documentary analysis will include: identifying and analysing national legislation, policy documents and associated resources (Eg. National Assembly for Wales (2015) Research paper Special Educational Needs/ Additional Learning Needs; DfE (2015). SEND Code of Practice). A key word search for terms associated with additional needs – eg, needs, vulnerable, looked after children. The process is expected to be iterative – as polices are engaged with it is expected different groups of pupils with additional needs will be alluded to and named/examples given, which will in turn be searched for in other documents. This approach will be piloted on manifestoes published by political parties in the run up to 2024 general election – the process and findings of this will be presented at ECER if such documents are available at the time of conference. Desk-based exploration of the publicly available data in the four home nations. A mapping exercise will take place to understand what data is currently available online with regards children with additional needs. Interview conversations with representatives in the departments responsible for education/any data-gathering bodies in the 4 home nations, for example the Administrative Data Research Centre - Northern Ireland. These interviews will have two main foci – i/to explore the participants’ conceptualisations of pupils with additional needs; ii/to understand what data collected on such pupils.

The paper will be focused on giving the context and describing the methods of the proposed study, and will not be reporting on empirical data (unless the pilot study has been carried out). It will raise attention of the different policy contexts and approaches to education, and to pupils with additional needs taken in each of the home nations of the UK, establishing that education policy is not the same across the UK. It will highlight the need for exploration of educational issues at a level between country and region, particularly in similar federal systems. It may also form the basis for future comparative studies with regards children with additional needs. The study could also be the starting point for relational analysis (Power, 2016), helping establish “processes of interdependence and mutual influence” (p. 19) between the different nations. Discussion may also occur around the limitations of future comparative studies (Power, 2016), for example differences in scale which make simple comparisons unsound (to compare a country with a population of nearly 55 million with one of 3 million). Another limitation is the political context of each home nation and issues such as pressure on public services, including special schools. A brief report on the pilot study may be made, presenting how concepts such as “disability”; “additional needs”; “special educational needs” and “vulnerable children” are framed in the different parties’ manifestoes produced and publicised for the upcoming UK general election (expected by end of 2024). It is hoped it will lead to broader theoretical understandings of the inclusion/exclusion of children who may benefit from support, beyond the deficit lens adopted by some policy definitions of special educational needs (Knight et al., 2023).

•Booth, T.(1996).A perspective on inclusion from England. Cambridge Journal of Education,26(1),87-99. •DfE/DoH (2015). Special Educational Needs and Disability Code of Practice. DfE. •Furlong, J., & Lunt, I. (2016). Education in a Federal UK. Oxford Review of Education, 42(3), 249-252. •Knight, C., Conn, C., Crick, T., & Brooks, S. (2023). Divergences in the framing of inclusive education across the UK: a four nations critical policy analysis. Educational Review, 1-17. •National Assembly for Wales (2015) Research paper Special Educational Needs (SEN)/ Additional Learning Needs (ALN)). National Assembly for Wales •Power, S. (2016). The politics of education and the misrecognition of Wales. Oxford Review of Education, 42(3), 285-298. •Raffe, D., Brannen, K., Croxford, L., & Martin, C. (1999). Comparing England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland: the case for 'home internationals' in comparative research. Comparative Education, 35(1), 9-25.