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In England the 2014 Children and Families Act introduced wide ranging changes to the assessment of and provision for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Guidance underpinning implementation was then published in the Code of Practice. Our study focuses on a key component of that legislation, known as the 'local offer', which requires local authorities to establish and maintain, clear, comprehensive, accessible and up to date information for children and young people with SEND, and their families, about available SEND provision. Local authorities are expected to involve children and young people and their families in co‐designing and reviewing their local offer, alongside other key stakeholders, to ensure provision is responsive to local needs and aspirations. To support our assessment of local offers we first established six categories based on the criteria in the Code of Practice about expected availability of SEND‐related information (e.g. financial support, health service information, accessibility information). We used these categories to evaluate the relevant local offer websites of all 151 English local authorities with legal responsibilities for SEND assessment and provision. We further assessed whether each local offer website included three common website accessibility functions. Our findings demonstrate variation in the availability of information at local authority level, therefore limiting the ability of some young people and families to make informed decisions about the support available to them. This provides further evidence to support growing concerns about 'postcode lottery' inequities for families and their children with SEND. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Preferential accumulation of minerals with high densities forming placer deposits in longitudinal bars of braided rivers relies on the segregation of this denser material from the quartz and feldspar sands dominating sediment in transport. Flume experimentation conducted on mixtures of quartz, pyroxene, magnetite, and lead sand transported over rough cobble beds demonstrated that the sand distribution was more uniform above the bed than theory predicted. The deviation from theory was inversely proportional to the density of the mineral. Fall velocity was not a good predictor of the amount of a mineral species carried in suspension, as coarse-grained quartz dominated the suspension population in the flume runs where lead was a major constituent in the traction population, even though the quartz had a greater fall velocity. Applying these results to placer deposits indicates that during flood events, even the smaller dense minerals and especially the super-dense minerals will be transported with the gravel and cobble load, whereas the quartz and feldspar will be spatially segregated during transport and temporally and spatially segregated during deposition. This mechanism of placer formation is capable of creating the types of deposits present in orebodies and showings such as the uraniferous paleoplacers at Elliot Lake, Canada, and the gold-bearing longitudinal bars in the Witwatersrand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Absence rates remain high in UK schools, with negative implications for attainment, life chances and inequality. Reasons for non-attendance are complex but include psychosocial factors. Few UK-based studies have evaluated psychosocial interventions for school attendance outcomes or its moderators. This pre-post evaluation examined the potential influence of school-based one-to-one counselling on school attendance and possible moderators., Design and Setting: Secondary analysis of routine data, collected by a national mental health provider in primary and secondary schools., Participants: 7405 pupils aged 4-19 years, with complete school attendance records at Time1 (pre-counselling term) and Time2 (the term when counselling ended)., Intervention: All participants received school-based one-to-one counselling with a trained counsellor between August 2016 and December 2019., Outcomes: Percentage of school sessions attended (continuous) and persistent absence (binary; attending ≤90% of sessions) in a term. Potential moderators included sociodemographics, mental health and school engagement/enjoyment., Results: Median Time1 attendance was 96%. 23.6% of participants were persistently absent. The intervention was not associated with improved percentage attendance (0.028%, 95% CI -0.160-0.216%) but was associated with 18.5% reduced odds of persistent absence (OR=0.815, 95% CI 0.729-0.911). We identified five moderators of change in attendance (interaction terms p<0.05): age group (improvements for 4-9 s; worsening for 15-19 s), improvement for some ethnicities and lower parent/carer education. Mental health and school engagement/enjoyment co-varied with attendance in expected directions., Conclusions: One-to-one counselling may improve school attendance among persistently absent pupils, particularly at younger ages. Improving mental health and pupil engagement/enjoyment are potential intervention targets. Our hypotheses require confirmation with controlled designs., Competing Interests: Competing interests: SG, KT, HW and JW declare that they are employed by the implementing organisation. JS was partially funded by Place2Be. There are no other conflicts of interest., (© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2024. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ.)