An analysis of BBC Newsnight’s video report on special needs pupils being ‘squeezed’ out of school
Here’s how I would present my special educational needs story that I had written as a video report, which is shown with this BBC Newsnight SEND investigation example.
This video by BBC Newsnight on their YouTube channel investigates how more than 1,500 children who have special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) have no school place in England.
It’s a great example of how this investigation uses video to illustrate the issue of how pupils with SEND are being ‘squeezed’ out of school. If this investigation was covered in a different medium (audio or text), it would lack the same impact that this Newsnight video report achieves.
BBC Newsnight is a news and current affairs programme so its audience is more likely to be constructed towards older people in the 35–64 age demographic.
At the start of the video, there is a medium close-up shot of a young boy, with his mother talking about how his son has not been in school since 2017.
Abstract
The video begins with a mixture of medium close-up and close-up shots that focus on the young boy with special educational needs, his mother and a headteacher. In the first few seconds of the investigation, the viewer already knows where the setting of the story is taking place in.
Narration is also added in the opening minute of the video with interviews from a school headteacher and the son’s mother. They talk about how pupils with special educational needs are being squeezed out of school.
The use of sombre music, combined with an invisible narrator gives the video a sad and almost helpless atmosphere for this investigation, which acts as the abstract to this video.
Orientation
The orientation of the investigation is about how pupils with special educational needs are being forgotten in schools across England. It uses visual graphics and sombre music to illustrate and explain how much of a problem it is for funding school places for SEND pupils.
This lays out the issue in a way that the audience who are watching this report can understand the true scale of the issue that is happening with SEND pupils in England.
Focus and movement
Much of the focus and movement throughout the video are generated through a mixture of piece-to-camera shots with short, sharp vox pops and interviews.
This includes moving from one medium close up shot of a young boy on the autism spectrum looking away from the camera. It then switches to back and forth shots with BBC Newsnight’s UK Correspondent Elizabeth Glinka interviewing the headteacher around the issue of places for SEND pupils.
In this scenario, I would have not cut to Glinka as it would have been better to use a close-up of the headteacher and reduce the cutting back and forth between Glinka and the headteacher. It would give that part of the report a first-person perspective rather than cutting back and forth between shots.
Use of elements in the video
Throughout this video, it uses a mixture of explaining, showing and speaking video conventions that make up the bulk of this BBC Newsnight investigation around SEND pupils.
In the middle of the video, the piece-to-camera shot with Glinka, she reports on how they pulled together individual freedom of information requests from the last six months into a map.
The map uses mimesis to how many school pupils with an education, health and care plan but have no education provision. When Newsnight counted up the figures for English councils, it found 1,580 pupils who had EHC plans but no education provision for them.
There’s also the use of the video speaking convention, which is illustrated with the second SEND pupil, who has not been in education for two years. His mother gives her account with how her son was excluded from a mainstream school for not having the right provision.
Coda
At the end of the investigation, the final interview uses the explain convention as the parent talks about how having a child with extra needs brings “extra stresses and pressures every day”.
She also adds about the challenges of getting equipment and having to fight to get that support in place. The video investigation concludes with three quick close ups of the three young boys with special educational needs.
Glinka, the UK Correspondent for BBC Newsnight concludes with the line “Out of sight and perhaps out of mind” to highlight the issues with school places and funding for SEND pupils.
What can I learn from this video?
There is a lot I can learn from watching this BBC Newsnight investigation around SEND pupils being squeezed out of schools in England. This report has a clear narrative and structure to the issue being covered, which makes it easy to watch through from start to finish.
However, this video struggles with viewer reach as the Newsnight investigation has over 7,000 views on YouTube.
In comparison with Channel 4 News report on parents being fined for SEN children not going to school, it had more than double the YouTube views of the BBC Newsnight video with over 15,000 views.
Would the video have generated more traffic by creating a 90-second video for social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram? Yes. Younger audiences would be able to watch the short-form video to see if it’s worth watching the full video on the BBC Newsnight YouTube channel.
With that said, I would definitely use the combination of medium to close-up shots, alongside some pieces to camera as demonstrated in the Newsnight report. This would enable me to create video reports that work not just for YouTube, but the main social media platforms too.
