It is June, and the exam season is finally winding down. The access arrangement deadlines have passed. The SLT requests have mostly been answered. You have fourteen handover documents to write before July, a SEND register to update, and a transition meeting with a primary school that keeps rescheduling. And somewhere in the background, the quiet awareness that September is nine weeks away.
Most SENCOs treat the end of the year as a finish line. The assessment data from October and January sit in a shared drive folder, referenced when needed but never systematically reviewed as a whole. The student who flagged low processing speed in October, what happened to her? The five Year 9s who screened low for reading fluency, did any of them get support? The Year 10 cohort who were never rescreened after Easter, you meant to get to that.
Then September comes, and the identification cycle starts again: reactive, rushed, and still catching up by half-term. The SENCOs who started in September calmly made a different decision in June. They used their summer term data while it was still current to plan exactly what September would need to look like. This guide shows you how.
Why end-of-year screening is different from a September baseline
Most schools that use assessment like SWIFT Â run their first cohort screen in September or October, capturing a new-year baseline for incoming Year 7s and beginning the identification process for older year groups.
But, end-of-year screening serves a different purpose.
A summer term screening is not about identifying students from scratch. It is about three specific things:
- Progress monitoring:-Â Has the support you provided this year moved the needle? Students who screened amber or red in September/October can be re-tested now. Cognitive efficiency, reading fluency, and processing speed metrics can all be compared against their baseline.
- Closing the gaps before handover:-Â Year 11s are leaving. Year 12s are finishing A-levels. Before they go, their SWIFT data should be documented in a format that travels with them. If they’re staying, their data should inform the transition to sixth form. If they’re leaving, their data should be part of the SEND information package handed to the next institution.
- September planning: The students who will become your most complex cases in September are already in your building. End-of-year screening lets you see them before they’re swamped by a new year, new timetable, and new expectations.
What to review in your assessment data before summer
If you have SWIFT results from this academic year, set aside 30 minutes before the end of term to do the following.
Review your cohort-level data
SWIFT’s group report multi-assessment shows you the distribution across your year groups: what proportion of students fell into each risk band for literacy, numeracy, and thinking skills. Before you close for summer, export this view for each year group you screened this year.
Ask: Where are the clusters?
If your Year 8 cohort shows a high proportion of low average scores in processing speed, that is a year-group pattern worth noting before September. It tells you that classroom teachers taking on that cohort in September need to know something specific about how those students work — and that the SENCO team needs to have support structures ready from week one.
Identify the students who were screened but not followed up
Every school has them. Students who flagged in October were added to a watchlist, and then, because of exam season pressure, staffing changes, or the sheer volume of work, never made it to the next stage of the identification process.
Pull your assessment data. Cross-reference it against your SEND register and your current intervention records. Any student who screened below average or low but has no recorded support or follow-up action this year is a priority for September.
Create a named list. It does not need to be long. Ten names, along with their assessment profiles, are enough to brief two or three subject teachers before the new term begins.
Check your progress monitoring data
For students who had support this year, a summer term re-screen is one of the most useful things you can do. SWIFT allows you to compare current performance against the original baseline, giving you standardised data on whether working memory, processing speed, or reading fluency has changed.
This is not just about justifying the support you provided. It is about knowing, before September, whether the intervention worked.
If a student’s scores have not moved after six months of targeted support, that is important clinical information. It may indicate that the support needs to change or that a more detailed individual assessment is needed. Knowing this in June, rather than discovering it in November, gives you something to plan around.
The four decisions to make before you close for summer
Based on your end-of-year data review, there are four decisions worth making before you leave.
1. Which year groups to prioritise for September screening
Not every year group needs a full screen in September. If you screened Year 7 in October and Year 8 in January, you have current data on those cohorts. The priority for September is usually:
- New Year 7s — No data yet. First-week screening (or first fortnight) gives you a baseline before patterns become entrenched.
- Year groups with large amber cohorts — If your data shows a cluster of students in a year group who weren’t followed up, early rescreening gives you updated information.
- Students transferring from primary — Their SEND information from primary does not always travel with them. A SWIFT screen in September is a quick, non-intrusive way to start building a current picture.
Decide now which year groups you are screening in September. Book the admin time now. If your IT setup needs checking, flag it for the IT coordinator before summer, not in your first week back.
2. Which students need individual assessment before Christmas
The students who scored low average or low this year but were never formally assessed are on your September list. Identify them now. Depending on your school’s assessment pathway, some of these students may be candidates for individual assessment using the Woodcock-Johnson V or any other assessment tool
If you have a CCET or ETAAC-qualified assessor in your building, prioritise their caseload now. If you do not, and your students are being referred to external providers, consider whether training an in-house assessor is the right investment for next year.
3. What subject teachers need to know in September
Assessment data is most valuable when it reaches the people who spend 25 hours a week with the students it describes. The end of the year is the right time to prepare a simple briefing document, not a detailed report, but a one-page profile for each year group that tells classroom teachers what to expect.
Things every class teacher briefing should include:
- Which students in this class have flagged for a learning difficulty and what that looks like in practice
- Which students have access arrangements or are being considered for them.
- A recommended intervention plan for those students.
A fifteen-minute briefing in September using assessment data in exactly the way it was designed to be used: to inform the professionals who need it, at the moment they need it
4. What your SEND provision map needs to say before September
If your school uses a provision map, end-of-year assessment data is the evidence base for updating it. Before you close, note the interventions that will need to continue in September, the new students who should be added to support registers, and the year groups where whole-class strategies should be recommended.
This is not paperwork for its own sake. A provision map built on current assessment data in July will take forty minutes. Building it reactively in October, after six weeks of new-year chaos, takes significantly longer and is based on six weeks of catch-up rather than systematic evidence.
A Six-Step Checklist for end-of-year Review
Use this checklist in the last two weeks of term.
- #1: Export your full cohort data for each year group screened this year. Save it somewhere you can access in September. Label it clearly by year group and date.
- #2: Identify students who screened Low average or low but have no recorded follow-up. Create a named list. Flag them for September priority.
- #3: Run re-screens for students who received interventions this year. Compare against baseline. Document the change (or lack of change).
- #4: Prepare a one-page year-group briefing for each class teacher. Name the students who need differentiation. Name the specific adjustments that will help them.
- #5: Decide your September screening windows. Block the dates. Confirm IT setup. Notify timetabling now if you need lesson slots.
- #6: Document any students requiring individual assessment in September. Brief the SENCO team (or external assessors if relevant) before summer so appointments can be prioritised from week one.
How SWIFT assessment makes end-of-year review manageable
One reason SENCOs often skip the end-of-year review is simply time. You are already running at full capacity in June. SWIFT is designed to make this kind of whole-cohort review fast. The SWIFT’s colour-coded reports give you an instant overview of how your year groups have performed, no manual spreadsheet analysis, no transferring scores between systems.
SWIFT comes with both A and B forms for progress monitoring and takes approximately 40 minutes per cohort, the same time as the original screen. The reports generate instantly. And because SWIFT assessments are group-administered digitally, students complete them independently at their own pace. You can run a re-screen during a form period, or time slot, without losing their academic time
Before You Finish for Summer: A Final Word
The end-of-year review is not a box to tick. It is the foundation for a September that starts from evidence rather than guesswork.
The schools that consistently identify students earlier, support them more effectively, and build stronger access arrangements cases are not necessarily larger, better-staffed, or better-resourced than other schools. They are simply the schools that made a decision in June to look at their data before it got filed, to plan before the pressure arrived, and to start September a step ahead.
That decision takes thirty minutes of data review and an hour of planning. The return on that hour lasts the entire academic year. Before you close for summer, do three things:
- Review your cohort data and identify students who need follow-up in September.
- Run re-screens for students who have been in intervention this year.
- Set your September screening windows and prepare class teacher briefings.
End-of-year screening is not an addition to an already overcrowded June workload. Used strategically, it replaces the reactive catch-up that would otherwise eat into October and November.
If you are not yet using SWIFT and you are reading this, thinking about September:
✅ SWIFT lets you assess an entire year group in under 40 minutes.
✅ Automated scoring and instant reports.
✅ No administration burden.
✅ Just clear, actionable data that tells you who needs support.
✅ Additional intervention planning support
