Education
RELIABILITY MATTERS BECAUSE LEARNING CAN’T WAIT
Device glitches are always inconvenient, but for SEND students in particular, they can be a barrier to confidence, continuity and independence. Harvina Bains of ASUS explores why reliability isn’t a ‘nice to have’, it’s an essential part of inclusive learning.
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t’s Monday morning. A Year 9 student with dyslexia opens her laptop to begin an essay. Te device starts instantly, her speech-to-
text soſtware loads without a hitch, and within seconds, she’s expressing ideas that would have taken hours to handwrite. She’s keeping pace with her classmates and succeeding with confidence. Same student, different scenario. Her laptop
freezes. She restarts it. It crashes again. By the time it’s finally working, the class has moved on, and the essay she could have written confidently now feels impossible. For SEND learners, device reliability isn’t about
convenience. It’s about access, participation and self-belief. Our research report, Building Confidence,
Enabling Success, surveyed 800 teachers across the UK to understand how device dependability affects SEND student outcomes. Te findings show that when technology consistently works, it doesn’t just help students complete tasks. It changes how they engage with learning and how they view their own abilities.
A growing reliance on technology More than 1.7 million learners in England now
18 | March/April 2026
receive some form of SEND support. Tat’s one in five pupils. Over 482,000 students have an Education, Health and Care Plan, double the number in 2016. Teachers in our research work across a wide
spectrum of needs. Dyslexia features in 64% of responses, ASC in 60%, SLCN in 59%, ADHD in 45%, MLD in 44% and anxiety disorders in 44%. For 65% of these learners, digital tools aren’t optional. Tey have moderate to high dependency on technology to assist their learning. Word processors for students with dyslexia,
digital planners for executive function difficulties, typed work for dyspraxia. Tese are now part of everyday classroom life. But the benefit of these tools depends entirely on whether they work when students need them.
What happens when devices work Te data shows a stark contrast between reliable and unreliable technology. When devices consistently perform, teachers observe real shiſts in how SEND students approach learning. Students who previously struggled to produce written work complete assignments confidently. Learners who fell behind because handwriting was physically
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