Closing the SEND gap through targeted interventions: Findings from the MetaSENse study

By Jo Van Herwegen, Professor of Developmental Psychology and Education, UCL’s Institute of Education Recent evidence shows that students with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) have lower educational outcomes compared to their peers and that this gap continues to increase (Tuckett et al., 2021). Although previous reviews have addressed how these students can benefit from best practice related to universal teaching, it is unclear what the evidence base looks like for targeted interventions. Most previous studies that have examined the impact of targeted interventions have either focused on specific targeted interventions (e.g. Does Lego Therapy work?) or on specific groups (e.g. Do targeted interventions work for students with dyslexia?). Whilst useful, such overviews do not allow insight for which educational outcomes or groups of SEND we lack research evidence for, or whether particular targeted interventions might benefit various educational outcomes and groups w