What the research says about deployment quality
Hours funded is not the same as hours that help. A look at the HEARTS Academy Trust research behind deployment quality.
It is tempting to treat funded hours as the measure of SEND provision. Hours are countable, budgeted and easy to report. But hours funded are not the same as hours that help, and the difference is what the research on deployment quality is about.
Busy is not the same as effective
Support can be fully deployed and still miss the mark: aimed at the wrong moment, detached from the lesson, or spread so thin that no pupil gets enough to matter. Deployment quality asks a sharper question than how many hours exist. It asks whether those hours change anything.
What the work points to
The research carried out with HEARTS Academy Trust points consistently in one direction. A few themes recur:
- Targeted support tends to outperform support that is simply present
- Support connected to the lesson outperforms support that runs alongside it
- Consistency over time matters more than occasional intensity
None of this is a reason to do less. It is a reason to look at where support goes, not just how much of it there is.
The question is not whether a pupil has support. It is whether that support is doing the work everyone hopes it is.
From counting to quality
Measuring quality is harder than counting hours, which is exactly why it is worth doing. The trusts that move first from counting to quality are the ones that turn a SEND budget into SEND impact.