Assessing children with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities using Routes for Learning: What the data from one school tells us

Background: To explore the longitudinal data collected by one schoolon progress of children with PIMD using Routes for learning (RfL)(WAG, 2006), an educational assessment tool for children with pro-found intellectual and multiple disabilities based on typical develop-ment covering communication, cognition and environmentalinteraction.Method: A school has been keeping data on individual children's pro-gress using RfL since 2006, consisting of the sequence in which theboxes were attained, the highest-numbered box achieved and thetotal boxes achieved at each time point. Ethical approval was obtainedfor access to an anonymised version of this data.Results: The sequence in which Routemap boxes were attained bychildren shows good agreement with the theoretical sequence. Youn-ger children acquired higher-numbered boxes at a significantly fasterrate than older children.Conclusions: Further investigation is needed into the factors contrib-uting to these results. The order in which boxes were achieved may inpart be determined by the teaching strategy of the school. Data onthe total number of boxes achieved at each time point will be pres-ented, but the apparently slower progress of older children may be due to teachers concentrating on generalising skills already acquired,or a larger developmental gap between later and earlier boxes