Special education needs (SEN) codes

SEN codes should be assigned only to students who have been assessed, and in the opinion of qualified staff, have a functional, cognitive, behavioural and/or socio-emotional disability, and/or limited assessment-language experience. There are three possible SEN codes, as listed below:

Code 1  Functional disability  – The student has a moderate to severe permanent physical disability. Students with functional disabilities who are able to participate should be accommodated in the assessment situation, to the extent possible, rather than exempted. 
Code 2  Cognitive, behavioural, and/or socio-emotional disability – In the opinion of qualified staff, the student has a cognitive, behavioural, and/or socio-emotional disability. It should be noted that students with learning disabilities should be accommodated in the assessment situation, to the extent possible, rather than exempted. 
Code 3  Limited assessment language experience – The student is not a native speaker of the language of the assessment and has limited proficiency in this language.  

 

If a student has been assigned a SEN code, this does not necessarily mean that the student cannot participate in PISA. PISA is intended to be as INCLUSIVE as possible. It is a large-scale assessment that is designed to be administered in a standardized way to all students. The vast majority of students, including students with special education needs, participate in the assessment (either in the regular test or the one-hour test), even though some of these students may not participate in other classroom or provincial assessment testing situations. As such, most students with special education needs may be included in the PISA assessment even if the full suite of accommodations they receive in the classroom or for individual tests used for grades or evaluations is not available. The goal is to have as many students as possible participate in PISA to produce valid and reliable information about the range of student learning outcomes in each province and in Canada overall.