“Appropriate support for these 1.4 million children with SEND in mainstream schools is critical to a well-functioning system for SEND.

It’s clear the system is not there yet. Outcomes for children and young people with SEND are poor… there is a fundamental mismatch between the scale of demand and the level of resource.”

– Ofsted Annual Report 2023/2024

...But what if there was a way to reduce your reading support bill by in excess of £22,700 per classroom, per year, and lighten the administrative load on your school SENCos, class teachers and exams team?

Read on to discover how a reading pen can work magic on your finances this term... ⬇️

So... we know education costs are rising.

The most recent Ofsted Annual Report wasn’t the most comfortable reading for anyone in the SEN sector, although the information it contained isn’t news to many of us.

We know that there exists several yawning gaps in provision in the UK education system, some of the most prominent being around literacy. We know that almost every school is currently struggling with demand – and with that demand is looking set to rise, we also know that they’re likely going to see out the decade under even more provision pressure.

And even with the new allocation for SEN in November’s Budget, the sums just don’t add up.

How can schools ensure that each and every learner has access to the reading tools they need to succeed when reading support professionals are in short supply, and the cost-of-learning crisis means that budgets have to stretch further than ever before?

It’s an answer that leads us from literacy to maths. ⬇️

Demand for support is increasing by tens of thousands of students a year.

We can supplement the SEN provision data in the Ofsted Annual Report by looking at the most recent government data release on Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs).

EHCP numbers went from 517,049 in 2023 to 575,963 in 2024, marking one of the largest-ever annual increases, at 11%. Across the decade, the increase is even more stark: in 2014, only 237,111 EHCPs were issued, which marks an uptick of a staggering 142.9%. 

Many of the EHCPs issued in 2024 were for literacy needs, which are becoming more pronounced as the ‘pandemic generation’ moves into school. Why? These are the learners whose initial literacy and language development were most impacted by the extended periods of isolation and the pitfalls of remote learning, and whose skill development was compromised because of it. There’s also been a huge uptick in dyslexia diagnoses across the broader pandemic period.

And there were more learners being issued EHCPs than there were leaving them: as TES pointed out at the time, although only 58,914 news plans have been issued, that information makes the real number come in at over 84,000. It’s no surprise, as diagnoses of special educational needs are increasing year on year as the profile of neurodiversity rises, and parents and teachers become more adept at identifying early signifiers, but it does pose a problem that we’re not currently equipped to answer:

We’re already struggling to supply the demand. And that’s only half of the story: schools have to support learners with SEN without EHCPs too. What happens if, over the next ten years, we see another increase on this kind of scale?

Educators are worried, and rightly so – because there just isn’t enough in the funding pot.

 

Which is making it harder than ever to implement early interventions.

 

We know that if we intervene early we can head a lot of reading needs off at the pass before they become entrenched. That’s the goal: research shows us that the earlier in a learner’s life we administer support, the greater the chance that their skill level will pull roughly in line with that of their peers. That means that the need for interventions further down the line gets vastly reduced as their outcomes increase.

But due to demand and funding constraints, educators in schools across the country are struggling to intervene during that optimum early window. Local Authorities are required to issue an EHCP within 20 weeks of the date of the initial request, and schools are required to implement the support detailed in the EHCP without delay… but that’s not the reality. Many councils are issuing as low as 5% of requested EHCPs by that 20-week deadline, and in some, it’s taking over a year.

Schools, too, are facing delays. A report from the Children’s Commissioner for England indicates that due to a dire lack of funding and resources, educators are struggling to provide the necessary support, and parents are having to chase EHCPs to get the support their children need.

So even when we are operating in that optimum window for early intervention, support might not be forthcoming for up to a year afterwards. In extreme cases, this may run even longer… and learners end up paying the price when those reading challenges become entrenched.

But how can you resource the support you need on these budgets?

Funding issues are at the core of this debate. Plans can’t be filled and learners can’t be supported when twenty students in a school need support, and there’s funding enough for five.

A large issue lies in the methodologies that we use to support reading. Alongside EdTech interventions, literacy support professionals have historically been the first line of defence against low literacy in the classroom. But there aren’t enough of these around and available to schools to remotely supply the demand – and in the unlikely event that a school can find the number it needs, salary costs on this level are prohibitive enough to render this kind of support impossible to resource.

…but there is a solution. ⬇️

We’ve talked about literacy – now let’s do the maths.

A single dedicated literacy support assistant or learning support assistant in a salaried position can cost schools around £23,000 annually.

Exam time is even more expensive when separate rooming is required for students with reading needs. This requires additional invigilators, who command an average of just under £12 per hour. Depending on the number of exams the individual student has, this has the potential to add hundreds of pounds to the invigilation bill.

And when we consider the number of hours of work it takes SENCos to prepare paperwork, and exams officers to make the submission, schools could be looking at, per pupil who needs individual support, workload, stress and cost become intertwined too.

Cost Breakdown

What could your school save with C-Pen Reader 3?

Median literacy support assistant salary:

➕£22,616.00

Median annual invigilator cost for KS2 SATs, per student (6 papers, <1 hour):

➕£71.64

OR Median annual invigilator cost for GCSEs, per student (18-30 papers, >1 hour 30 minutes):

➕£286.56

Additional 10 hours of labour by SENCo, at average salary £43,450:

➕£208.90

Additional 3 hours of labour by Exams Officer, at average salary £25,835:

➕£37.26

That's an annual bill of around £22,933 for a learner sitting their KS2 SATs, and a staggering £23,148 for one sitting an average number of GCSEs.

But the right reading pens can change all that.

C-Pen Reader 3 is a text-to-speech reading tool that’s revolutionising reading support for students and giving schools back their budgets, allowing them to get more support into more student hands, and fill EHCPs faster than ever.

The implementation journey is as quick and as simple as scan, listen, understand: students move the pen across the page to get started. Lightning-fast audio relays the words back to them, boosting their comprehension and their independence – and as students problem-solve themselves, using Reader 3’s suite of onboard practice, dictionary and scan-to-file tools, it frees up educator bandwidth as well as fosters stronger reading skills. This means learners head into those exams feeling ready to tackle whatever that test paper throws at them, with the confidence to be creative, show the examiner what they can do, and smash their target grades.

And reading pen support doesn’t have to stop at the exam hall door, either. C-Pen Exam Reader 2 is a cost-cutting alternative to human readers and individual rooming that ensures students have access to reading support exactly when they need it most. It’s approved by JCQ for use in UK exams because of its unique zero-storage design, and it ensures that learners have access to fast, dependable reading support without compromising the integrity of the exam process.

And Exam Reader 2 hugely cuts down on the amount of administration that busy school SENCos and exams teams have to do. C-Pen Exam Reader 2 is a centre-delegated support solution – so if a reading pen has been a student’s Normal Way of Working (NWoW) that school year, then they can take one into the exam hall with them, with no need for a Form 8.

And here’s the best part of the whole equation: compared to human readers, extra invigilation, and the extra strain on your SEN and exams team...

...a single C-Pen Reader 3 comes in at more than £22,700 cheaper than your current human reader solution.

💡 Want to find out exactly how much your school could save this academic year? Head over to the Scanning Pens Cost Calculator to explore in more depth just how much of your available funds C-Pen reading supports could free up from your budget!

 

 

…But we know that you need to see it in action, first.

We get it: budgets are tight, and you need to know that the classroom literacy supports and the exam solutions you’re investing in do what they say on the tin. That’s why Scanning Pens offers educators a FREE 30-day trial of C-Pen Reader 3 or C-Pen Exam Reader 2, so that you can explore how they revolutionise reading in your setting before you allocate funds.

And we’re a chatty bunch. If you want to speak to one of our reading support experts about supporting the reading needs in your Trust, school or classroom, we’re always happy to explore in-depth solutions for your setting!

📧 Drop us a line: ukinfo@scanningpens.com 

☎️ Give us a call: +44 (0) 207 976 4910