The SMART Target Audit
It is a hope written in professional language.
Most SEND targets written under time pressure are SMART-adjacent rather than genuinely SMART. They use the right vocabulary, gesture toward measurability, and carry a review date somewhere on the page. Held up against each letter individually, the gaps appear fast — and those gaps are exactly what get noticed at review, at tribunal, and at inspection.
A five-minute self-assessment for SENDCos. Pick one live target from a plan you've already written, and hold it up against each question below, honestly. If you can't tick a box without hesitating, that's the part of the target worth rewriting first.
Two examples, side by side
Here is what that looks like in practice.
“To improve fine motor skills to support handwriting.”
Why it fails. No baseline. No measurable threshold. No defined assessment method. Sounds professional, says almost nothing.
“By the 12-week review, [pupil] will form all lowercase letters correctly when copying a short sentence, assessed using the school's handwriting benchmark tool, on three consecutive observed occasions.”
“Will make progress in phonological awareness.”
Why it fails. Progress measured how? From what baseline? Assessed by whom, using what tool, by when?
“By the end of term, [pupil] will correctly identify the initial sound in 9 out of 10 CVC words, assessed weekly using the school's phonics tracker.”
What to do with this
If you found yourself wishing this was easier to do consistently across a full caseload, under real time pressure — that's exactly the gap OMNIA was built to close. Grounded in a 371-source evidence base and calibrated to the individual pupil.