Public Funding for Cogs Ai Ltd

UK Government's 'SEND Review, 2022' found decisions surrounding children's education are mainly influenced by location or school, rather than their needs. Despite over a third of pupils being identified as having Special Educational Needs (SEN) during their schooling, funding shortages and regional inconsistencies means many who have fallen behind due to late interventions are unable to catch up. Factors driving this: * Schools frequently ill-equipped to identify and effectively support children's diverse and complex needs. * Children's needs are identified late, then escalate, becoming entrenched. * Children may be incorrectly identified as having SEN when actually they have had insufficient access to high-quality teaching. * Increased requests for Education Health & Care Plans and specialist provision means significant delays in children accessing support due to a long and bureaucratic process. A 2017 study showed SEN were most common in children with a mental health disorder (35.6%). Young people with SEN often have fewer opportunities, e.g., less likely to be in sustained employment and at greater risk of exposure to a number of harms, including crime (SEND,2022). When children are assessed for SEN, educational psychologists will use a combination of methods e.g. teacher/parent reports, classroom observations, speaking to the children, and cognitive assessments (e.g., WISC-V). Depending on the SEN being assessed, WISC should be used in combination with other types of psychometric tests, thus adding to costs for schools. Whilst using all of these methods together is the SEN assessment "gold standard" (and would happen if you got a private educational psychologist assessment), given funding limitations, this does not always happen (or only happens for the children with the highest need). Cogs AI will partner with Cambridge University to produce a Neurodiversity Screener for rapid identification of SEN, reducing time/costs required to complete assessments.