AI speeding up special educational needs reports

Artifical intelligence (AI) is being used by a council in a bid to cut lengthy waiting times for children's special needs reports.

Stoke-on-Trent City Council produces hundreds of education, health and care plans (EHCPs) each year and has been struggling to issue them on time because of increased demand, but delays can leave families waiting for extra support.

In 2023-24, 43% of the council's EHCPs were completed within 20 weeks, compared with a national target of 60%.

Members of a scrutiny committee were told AI tools had been trained to extract information from documents such as psychological reports and write it into a plan - completing the task faster than a human.

Delyth Mathieson, assistant director of education and family support, said each young person received a range of different reports and until now, individual case workers pulled elements together.

She said: "What we're looking at is a process whereby we can upload those reports, securely obviously, so that the information is collated and dropped into the format automatically and intelligently."

The process still involved a case worker who knows the children, she told the children and family services overview and scrutiny committee.

That case worker went through each individual report to check for any misunderstandings by the AI, she added.

Ms Mathieson said the approach also freed up case workers to "focus on the quality of that report, rather than a cut-and-paste exercise".

Committee member Laura Carter, welcomed the move, adding: "If we have the option of bringing in technology, then why not use it?"

The council said it had cleared its backlog and provisional figures for April showed 83% of EHCPs were issued within 20 weeks.

The authority has also recruited more educational psychologists, changed how applications are processed, and increased early intervention to reduce demand.

This news was gathered by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, which covers councils and other public service organisations.

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