What the politicians miss, and why parents are so angry, is that each of our children only gets one chance at their education, they are not variables in some social experiment where it doesn’t really matter if it goes wrong a few times.
There is so much to unpick and I am very grateful to you for championing this.
Our local authority has pretty much stopped issuing EHC plans.
Most of the staff at my daughter’s state high school do not understand neurodiversity. There are around 2-3 dedicated members of staff for the whole school. The school is focused on targets.
The numbers of children school refusing because their needs are not being met I think must be huge. I know plenty of girls in particular who are not receiving any education at all.
The whole system is broken. And your points in the Guardian were so right. If people were made aware about how many children were not getting an education maybe they would have more understanding.
There are thousands of taxi and minibus drivers who do their work with dedication, patience and compassion, but there are disruptions to the SEND school runs every day, due in part to traffic conditions and weather and taxi mechanical issues.
These are transport services provided to our most vulnerable young people who would be better provided for in local schools. The millions of pounds used for transport would be better used in local community schools to fund the staff and their training and the necessary facilities to include all but the most specialist SEND needs children of all abilities.
What is happening with money that should be funding SEND children's education is being consumed by SEND transport. It is a system that is bankrupting some LAs.
The reforms cannot take place overnight, but the first step must be to end the wasted time and costs of the EHCP process itself, tied up in form-filling and appeals, tribunals and barrister-level legal disputes. In all this children's education opportunities are being decimated.
Too many school have been turned into parts of corporations focusing on the success of their academic, university potential children, rather than educating everyone in their locale. The NUT had a campaign awhile back promoting high quality local education for every child, in a challenge to the fragmentation of LAs and the academy programme. This includes children who have SEND conditions to work with.
There are of course children with SEND difficulties that require unique education settings, the hospital schools, for example, but to have an SEND process which segregates, partitions and transports children into an apartheid system because local schools are under-funded, under-staffed and grade focused is criminal.
Schools, LAs and NHS trusts spend a huge amount of time, money and resource on running the 20 week EHCP paper trail, (if they can do it in 20 weeks), then more again on the EHCP Annual Review process, (if at all possible). Again, this is resource that ought to be directed into schools to educate children. There is a lucrative specialist employment agency sector devoted to recruiting LA staff on daily rates far in excess of TA and often more than teacher pay, to keep the EHCP paperwork churning. Again, the SEND statutory process is devouring resources that LAs might be spending in schools, were they able to manage their local schools directly. We have seen free market ideology destroy our locality focused education network.
Primary schools, due to a large extent on their clear focus on the childhood development and smaller size, daily do brilliantly educating SEND children, but transition to much larger, under-funded secondary schools can unmask SEND needs of Y7 children who have been taught as the individuals they are at primary. Then in secondary schools, as the children gain life experience, things happen which can catapult them into the SEND system, rather than supported in their local school.
Every teacher knows that the time, staff and money spent outside of schools on the EHCP administration would be better directed into schools for these children.
Thanks for posting. Really appreciated. Is your argument that the resources, time etc are ingrained in EHCPs, or that the process must be properly funded and overseen? I ask because nothing's going to work without thorough needs assessments, and what the govt seems to be planning would make them much less likely. Ps I agree that the balkanisation of schools by academies etc isn't helping
The needs assessment needs doing at home and at school as a simple two step process for LA employed specialist (an ed psych?) who knows who else to liaise with where needed. The multiagency form filling is a disaster for workloads, taking away from actually educating children and supporting families. Many EHCPs have been written by parents, who in the more able families know more about their offspring than any professional. A big hole in the process opens up for children with SEND who are themselves parented by adults with SEND who cannot argue the case, or push for the right support. Community is the key to healthy and happy lives. Education for all is better close to home. I will not divert into the subject if private schools at this point, but private education again hides children from the real world to come and again raises the question of what is school for.
Yes, the EHCP system is broken and something has to be done. TA pay and training must be improved in order to ensure that this vital role is professionalised so that every school can properly educate SEND children from within their catchment areas.
It is not uncommon for younger TAs to move into teacher training, taking with them a good understanding of SEND and the most effective teaching needed for a wide range of children's needs. Why not turn the TA role into an entry to teaching route, perhaps even a path that could bring non-graduates into a serious career path that offers degree level opportunities as TAs gain experience? A way to grow from TA to SENCo might even be opened for those many committed TAs who are mothers returning to work.
Too many children with SEND are being shipped many hours a week by taxi, minibus and parents. These journeys are often long, or on congested routes and do considerable harm to the well-being of the children. Local Authorities spend millions contracting taxi and minibuses to get every SEND child to school in time. The problem is not only cost, but early starts, stress of crack of dawn alarm calls, washing, dressing and breakfasting the children, then at the end of the day parents (particularly mothers) being faced with their child returning from the commute who may decompress their emotions after the travelling in a variety of distressing ways. Every working adult knows how stressful commuting can be, but here we have SEND children being lumped around our counties and cities because their local, target driven school is focused on delivering grades for the academically suited, not educating the children in its local community.
I have friends who provide this taxi service for SEND children. They tender each year to the local authority. They are experienced and provide an escort. We often discuss it and the distance children are travelling is a lot. However the LA is now awarding these contracts to inexperienced drivers which is also a worry.
Thank you John for this comprehensive account of the deeply disappointing intentions of SEN provision changes. I cannot imagine how this is going to work. Of course the EHCP system doesn't work either. I worry for so many children.
Impressive breakdown of the implementation gap here. The contradiction between mandating inclusion and offering £200m spread across all education staff is kinda wild when you think about it. Worked with some mainstream schools last year and dunno how they'd absord more SEND kids without addressing baseline capacity issues first. This incremental-change-meets-radical-policy problem seems real.
John, I love your columns and really appreciate the insight you share. One thought from me: the school-age population is going to fall sharply over the next few years. Does this not provide an opportunity for mainstream schools to rethink SEND provision, instead of just reducing the number of classrooms or closing schools altogether?
If a teacher could be a speech and language therapists, a sensory intergration OT, a physiotherapist, a clinical psycholgists, educational psycholgists, speclists in dyslexia, motor disorders, they would not be teachers. As those other pathways pay better.
You an I know that the amount of areas we need to become proficienct in, is an ongoing endeavours to build the toolkit of knowledge and skill set to tap into. To have to do this for those that meet the ehcp citersia z those with sen and lead and need that should be supported as part of ordinary provision, and having another 25 to 30 children, is not possible.
A room to put all children with send need, as id all send need is the same and compatible , is not inclusion .
It is segregation
In terms of enviroment, you need it to be ken where the rights do children and you g people are enshrined.
A school that has quotas of children to punish by class.
Toilet brake limited to break times, with I sifficient facilties for all to use in that time
Isolation rooms.
Inclusion is not possible in these spaces.
Then lets add on the top slicing of academies. And the trading. Accounts also extracting.
They Nuffield report for education spend stares the top slicing is 3 to 5 % but up to 10. In the midlands the Arther Terry chain has strikes. the amount is nearer 24%.
They are going to cut the salaries of TAs by 3 to 4k
neu is covering it.
The education spend is reported in Nuffield at 116 billion.
That a lot of funds. Which one year would cover the current higher needs block deficit for every local authority.
Id you need a story for your campaign .
Most children like the, are send to places like the Helsey group .
I don't know if you know of the scandel re that group
The send plan refers to a report done by christine Lenahan re this .
If you need a story for the campaign
Out 6 years. Twin out 4. I keep everthing electronically.
I have a repost of a service that came in and played with the reins with differing toys
They report states, intensive interaction , low demand .
The la also commsioned out speech and language therapist to run free speech and language courses, the hanan more than words, and the Elkan for verbal autistic children.
Sounds like all the ingredients necessary to prompt another government U-turn -- when it is forced to acknowledge the huge holes in its SEND plans, by enough angry and worried parents and overworked, sceptical teachers.
Create targets for ire. Send need is being decided by politicians, not the specialist in need. With the new laws coming in , giving the state more power via the LAs, will be horrific. They effectively are creating a coercive system of abuse to frontline staff, parent carers, and the children they are supposed to support
What the politicians miss, and why parents are so angry, is that each of our children only gets one chance at their education, they are not variables in some social experiment where it doesn’t really matter if it goes wrong a few times.
There is so much to unpick and I am very grateful to you for championing this.
Our local authority has pretty much stopped issuing EHC plans.
Most of the staff at my daughter’s state high school do not understand neurodiversity. There are around 2-3 dedicated members of staff for the whole school. The school is focused on targets.
The numbers of children school refusing because their needs are not being met I think must be huge. I know plenty of girls in particular who are not receiving any education at all.
The whole system is broken. And your points in the Guardian were so right. If people were made aware about how many children were not getting an education maybe they would have more understanding.
There are thousands of taxi and minibus drivers who do their work with dedication, patience and compassion, but there are disruptions to the SEND school runs every day, due in part to traffic conditions and weather and taxi mechanical issues.
These are transport services provided to our most vulnerable young people who would be better provided for in local schools. The millions of pounds used for transport would be better used in local community schools to fund the staff and their training and the necessary facilities to include all but the most specialist SEND needs children of all abilities.
What is happening with money that should be funding SEND children's education is being consumed by SEND transport. It is a system that is bankrupting some LAs.
The reforms cannot take place overnight, but the first step must be to end the wasted time and costs of the EHCP process itself, tied up in form-filling and appeals, tribunals and barrister-level legal disputes. In all this children's education opportunities are being decimated.
Too many school have been turned into parts of corporations focusing on the success of their academic, university potential children, rather than educating everyone in their locale. The NUT had a campaign awhile back promoting high quality local education for every child, in a challenge to the fragmentation of LAs and the academy programme. This includes children who have SEND conditions to work with.
There are of course children with SEND difficulties that require unique education settings, the hospital schools, for example, but to have an SEND process which segregates, partitions and transports children into an apartheid system because local schools are under-funded, under-staffed and grade focused is criminal.
Schools, LAs and NHS trusts spend a huge amount of time, money and resource on running the 20 week EHCP paper trail, (if they can do it in 20 weeks), then more again on the EHCP Annual Review process, (if at all possible). Again, this is resource that ought to be directed into schools to educate children. There is a lucrative specialist employment agency sector devoted to recruiting LA staff on daily rates far in excess of TA and often more than teacher pay, to keep the EHCP paperwork churning. Again, the SEND statutory process is devouring resources that LAs might be spending in schools, were they able to manage their local schools directly. We have seen free market ideology destroy our locality focused education network.
Primary schools, due to a large extent on their clear focus on the childhood development and smaller size, daily do brilliantly educating SEND children, but transition to much larger, under-funded secondary schools can unmask SEND needs of Y7 children who have been taught as the individuals they are at primary. Then in secondary schools, as the children gain life experience, things happen which can catapult them into the SEND system, rather than supported in their local school.
Every teacher knows that the time, staff and money spent outside of schools on the EHCP administration would be better directed into schools for these children.
Thanks for posting. Really appreciated. Is your argument that the resources, time etc are ingrained in EHCPs, or that the process must be properly funded and overseen? I ask because nothing's going to work without thorough needs assessments, and what the govt seems to be planning would make them much less likely. Ps I agree that the balkanisation of schools by academies etc isn't helping
The needs assessment needs doing at home and at school as a simple two step process for LA employed specialist (an ed psych?) who knows who else to liaise with where needed. The multiagency form filling is a disaster for workloads, taking away from actually educating children and supporting families. Many EHCPs have been written by parents, who in the more able families know more about their offspring than any professional. A big hole in the process opens up for children with SEND who are themselves parented by adults with SEND who cannot argue the case, or push for the right support. Community is the key to healthy and happy lives. Education for all is better close to home. I will not divert into the subject if private schools at this point, but private education again hides children from the real world to come and again raises the question of what is school for.
Absolutely. I agree with everything you’ve said.
Yes, the EHCP system is broken and something has to be done. TA pay and training must be improved in order to ensure that this vital role is professionalised so that every school can properly educate SEND children from within their catchment areas.
It is not uncommon for younger TAs to move into teacher training, taking with them a good understanding of SEND and the most effective teaching needed for a wide range of children's needs. Why not turn the TA role into an entry to teaching route, perhaps even a path that could bring non-graduates into a serious career path that offers degree level opportunities as TAs gain experience? A way to grow from TA to SENCo might even be opened for those many committed TAs who are mothers returning to work.
Too many children with SEND are being shipped many hours a week by taxi, minibus and parents. These journeys are often long, or on congested routes and do considerable harm to the well-being of the children. Local Authorities spend millions contracting taxi and minibuses to get every SEND child to school in time. The problem is not only cost, but early starts, stress of crack of dawn alarm calls, washing, dressing and breakfasting the children, then at the end of the day parents (particularly mothers) being faced with their child returning from the commute who may decompress their emotions after the travelling in a variety of distressing ways. Every working adult knows how stressful commuting can be, but here we have SEND children being lumped around our counties and cities because their local, target driven school is focused on delivering grades for the academically suited, not educating the children in its local community.
I have friends who provide this taxi service for SEND children. They tender each year to the local authority. They are experienced and provide an escort. We often discuss it and the distance children are travelling is a lot. However the LA is now awarding these contracts to inexperienced drivers which is also a worry.
Thank you John for this comprehensive account of the deeply disappointing intentions of SEN provision changes. I cannot imagine how this is going to work. Of course the EHCP system doesn't work either. I worry for so many children.
Impressive breakdown of the implementation gap here. The contradiction between mandating inclusion and offering £200m spread across all education staff is kinda wild when you think about it. Worked with some mainstream schools last year and dunno how they'd absord more SEND kids without addressing baseline capacity issues first. This incremental-change-meets-radical-policy problem seems real.
Thank you!
John, I love your columns and really appreciate the insight you share. One thought from me: the school-age population is going to fall sharply over the next few years. Does this not provide an opportunity for mainstream schools to rethink SEND provision, instead of just reducing the number of classrooms or closing schools altogether?
If a teacher could be a speech and language therapists, a sensory intergration OT, a physiotherapist, a clinical psycholgists, educational psycholgists, speclists in dyslexia, motor disorders, they would not be teachers. As those other pathways pay better.
You an I know that the amount of areas we need to become proficienct in, is an ongoing endeavours to build the toolkit of knowledge and skill set to tap into. To have to do this for those that meet the ehcp citersia z those with sen and lead and need that should be supported as part of ordinary provision, and having another 25 to 30 children, is not possible.
A room to put all children with send need, as id all send need is the same and compatible , is not inclusion .
It is segregation
In terms of enviroment, you need it to be ken where the rights do children and you g people are enshrined.
A school that has quotas of children to punish by class.
Toilet brake limited to break times, with I sifficient facilties for all to use in that time
Isolation rooms.
Inclusion is not possible in these spaces.
Then lets add on the top slicing of academies. And the trading. Accounts also extracting.
They Nuffield report for education spend stares the top slicing is 3 to 5 % but up to 10. In the midlands the Arther Terry chain has strikes. the amount is nearer 24%.
They are going to cut the salaries of TAs by 3 to 4k
neu is covering it.
The education spend is reported in Nuffield at 116 billion.
That a lot of funds. Which one year would cover the current higher needs block deficit for every local authority.
Id you need a story for your campaign .
Most children like the, are send to places like the Helsey group .
I don't know if you know of the scandel re that group
The send plan refers to a report done by christine Lenahan re this .
If you need a story for the campaign
Out 6 years. Twin out 4. I keep everthing electronically.
I have a repost of a service that came in and played with the reins with differing toys
They report states, intensive interaction , low demand .
The la also commsioned out speech and language therapist to run free speech and language courses, the hanan more than words, and the Elkan for verbal autistic children.
This was in 2015/16.
They knew what was needed.
They always knew.
Sounds like all the ingredients necessary to prompt another government U-turn -- when it is forced to acknowledge the huge holes in its SEND plans, by enough angry and worried parents and overworked, sceptical teachers.
The style is terror people.
Create targets for ire. Send need is being decided by politicians, not the specialist in need. With the new laws coming in , giving the state more power via the LAs, will be horrific. They effectively are creating a coercive system of abuse to frontline staff, parent carers, and the children they are supposed to support