How did CRISP originate?
Birmingham Education Service, through the criteria for SEN audit, had set out a clear framework to help schools decide at what stage of the Code of Practice children should be. The Education Service had also developed criteria for statutory assessment, published in each school’s SEN Handbook, that built on the Code’s criteria. By these means, guidance on how levels of children’s difficulty matched stages 1 to 4 of the Code was offered, but no guidance on provision at stage 5 to be made for an identified level of difficulty when a child had been assessed.
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Informal contact with other local authorities provided examples of assessment criteria for stage 4 but not provision criteria for stage 5. The exception was Coventry LEA which had developed a descriptive framework for special educational provision based on four dimensions - Curriculum, Staffing, Resources, and Environment and Facilities. With grateful thanks to Coventry for making available its substantial work, Birmingham CRISP group then adapted the Dimensions to fit its own provision and developed a corresponding Assessment Framework.
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| In special education over the last twenty years or so, there has been a growth in the richness of description of children’s needs from the assessment side and a corresponding richness in the range of provision offered, so that schools have outgrown the labels that indicate what they provide. CRISP, like the Coventry Dimensions seeks to capture the detail of provision. It also seeks to match the individual assessment profile of each child to the best fit of available provision within Birmingham.
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