National policy framework for SEND and inclusion
Many commentators are currently arguing that SEND policy is in crisis. This is in spite of the reforms that were supposed to improve children’s and families’ experience of the system, and in which so much time and effort was invested in the early years of the Coalition government.
A lengthy review has led to the national SEND and AP improvement programme. There is widespread scepticism as to whether this will address the fundamental problems that are occurring across the sector. Schools are experiencing significant challenges in meeting pupil needs with rising staffing costs, diminishing support and narrower accountability. Parents are increasingly distrustful of schools’ and local authorities’ ability to meet their children’s needs and feel driven to requesting statutory assessments to try and ensure that proper provision is made. Local authorities are experiencing huge increases in statutory activity, and most are struggling to meet needs within the funding provided by central government (even though this has grown significantly over the last 5-6 years).
So, what needs to be done to improve the situation? With an imminent general election, there is the prospect of a new government who will need to rapidly get to grips with the issues and come up with their proposals for change. They are unlikely to have the luxury of carrying out another fundamental review. In our view, they will need an accessible framework that helps them reflect on the things that policy should address, on what is wrong with the current system, and what needs to happen to improve it. They will need to go beyond the limited focus of the SEND/AP improvement programme and think more broadly.
The SEN Policy Research Forum, through its seminars and other activities, has significant resources that can inform analysis and future directions, based on evidence and collective experience. Drawing from this, we have been producing a policy framework which we have already started to use in our discussions with other organisations that have a shared interest in positive change. We are putting it up on our website at this stage as we would like Forum members to contribute to its further development through comment/discussion on the blog. This will help us refine the document to enhance the Forums’ engagement in policy formation.
To see the Framework, click this link: SENPRF Framework SEND & Inclusion
For supporting references, please click this link: SENPRF Framework references
We will also be inviting you, as part of a separate thread, to contribute your personal thoughts about what a new Government should consider in addressing current policy issues. So, watch this space!
This is timely and much needed. There is a lot of work to do. Outdated curriculum and assessment models, size of classes, number of supply teachers, staff burnout making them less able to respond to SEND pupils’ needs, frenetic and high stress atmosphere of many busy high schools, makes secondary education inaccessible to many children with SEND. This has been mine and my daughter’s experience after 3 secondary settings which led to increased Emotional Based School Avoidance. Her education since Year 6 has been something she had had to survive. Thankfully only 2 more weeks of GCSE exams to go. Looking forward to reading the SENPRF Framework in detail.
Thank you for this valuable work – I’d like to see every candidate respond to this before the general election!
A secure understanding by cross parliamentary ministers of the complexities of providing identification and appropriate support at the earliest possible stage across all services – education, social welfare and health, would be essential for reforms to start to make a difference. Effective reform is not soley about responding to a crisis but also fundamentally about creating the environment for the prevention of SEND needs from developing in the first place and escalating. Reform and investment will therefore need to take the long view and be coordinated independently of party politics.
In my mind, the crisis has long been brewing, and has its genesis in the creation of the adversarial and crudely judgemental OFSTED system of accountability, and in academisation, which is an offence to pedagogy, mapping business models onto the teaching of unique young people. In this culture, individuality is seen as problematic (both in pupils and staff), test results dominate, and systems trump humanity. Trainee teachers are not taught properly about the diversity of SEND pupils and how to successfully interact with them, and inclusivity is seen more as a bolt-on challenge than an essential element of quality teaching. Together with demoralised staff, whom parents and the wider community no longer respect or value as they once might have done, pupils are carrying the weight of continuous policy changes which never reflect the knowledge and lived experience of educators, creating a toxic mix of insecurity, isolation and failure. I say: train teachers better, celebrate diversity, give educators the autonomy to love their work and inspire success (in whatever form it takes) in their students, and transform the organs of accountability so that schools can breathe and flourish, spiky profiles and all, and our country can have an education system which reflects what was said of our country in 2012, when the London Olympics were “the happy Games”.
I think the SEND national deficit is equilivent to the new national service proposal.
I say wipe the send debt and restart.
Change has to be top down that means that LA SEND has to reform. There are many failures in the journey where secret decisions are made about a child’s future behind closed doors. This must stop. Unlawful behaviours must stop.
Tribunals are wasteful and barriers to children’s needs. The percentage of parental success indicates the failures of the SEND dept.
Yes responsibility also lies within training programmes for teaching inclusiveness rather than segregation.
Schools are driven by targets and funding. Ofsted needs urgent reform or abolishment. Surely Ruth’s death should mean something.
How about LA SEND dept reform. What if they had to be open and transparent?. What if they had to work with the family? What if they had to support the child? Surely they would save money and suicides rather than barrister battles against the family, attendance criminal prosecutions against the family, child protection enforced to control the family. Pitching the school against the family.
Currently most SEND departments work to the remit of refuse to help. All depts have at least 50 employees whose job is to gatekeep money from centralised government. However they have failed so catastrophically they have had to sign off to new central government initiatives again and again. The latest being the Safety Valve where the SEND dept applies for more money to pay off their deficit if they reduce help and support to vunerable disabled children within agreed timeframes.
This is being pitched nationally as a ‘wow we have received more funding’ but the reality is unlawful and putting in more barriers to education.
If the LA actually employed a solicitor to monitor the SEND dept rather than work with them to avoid the law. Would be a step in the right direction.
I am one of numerous SEND parents whom have had to go to extradinary lengths. To dig deep and we understand how vitriolic and systemically rotten the LA is.