SEND Consultation Response

1. We want children, young people and their families to be involved in making better, evidence‑based decisions about SEND, both in their local area and across the country. How can we make sure children, young people and their families have a genuine say in these decisions?

While I welcome the sentence in principle 5 stating that the voices of children should be at the heart of decision making, I am concerned that it is only one sentence at the end of a much broader and vague principle. The current legislation places the child and family’s voice at the heart of the whole system. While current implementation fails to deliver this consistently or meaningfully in some cases, when a parent understands the law and works to support their child in having their say, it is the most powerful motivator for change with a local authority.

I’m very concerned that the current proposals, and the manner in which the “listening” and “consultation” exercises have been conducted signify a huge shift away from putting children’s voices at the heart of decision making.

I’m also concerned about the definition of “evidence-based”. Currently, the system requires a child’s needs to increase to such an extent as “evidence” of need that they become unable to learn and then have to recover from significant trauma – increasing their SEND further and over a long time.

2. How can we make sure that high-quality evidence and best practice inform decisions about SEND? Please share examples

The current system has always been vastly under-resourced. As a result, needs assessments are kept to a bare minimum and experts are guided to reach conclusions that are vague and to the greatest possible extent lead decision makers to name mainstream schools. Local authorities frequently refuse to conduct SLT or OT assessments, never mind mental health assessments even if requested by parents under s9.49 of the COP. As a result, the evidence is not high-quality, EHC plans are not compliant and are often undeliverable. This leads to the high success rate by parents in tribunals and is entirely due to a lack of LA high-quality evidence.

Private assessments are always far more detailed and of high quality, but ignored by LAs unless held to account by tribunal. This is a principle reason why the tribunal system must remain in place. If the SEND system is correctly resourced, LAs will abide by current law and tribunals will decrease.

Importantly, high-quality evidence and best practice must start with individual assessment of a child’s needs by experts. School staff have neither the training, expertise or time to assess SEND.

3. How can we ensure that children are best supported by the Universal offer?

Children with SEND cannot be adequately supported if their needs are not first identified and understood.  I welcome the government’s principle of early identification not predicated on diagnosis, but this is not reform or new. It has been a longstanding aspiration at least since 2014. However, a universal offer does not currently allow access to experts who can accurately identify need, and the proposed funding is literally a drop in the ocean compared to the actual requirements. £100 per educator will not equip anyone to identify a child with autism, ADHD, learning difficulty, trauma, dyspraxia, absence seizures etc etc etc. Much less will it train teachers to support these children.

I welcome the focus on national inclusion standards but I’m very concerned about the vagueness of the proposal. Schools are already under a duty to identify SEND, and are already bound by the Equality Act, though many dispute this in reality. In terms of refreshing the areas of need, this is merely semantics and of no practical help. The changes made to the areas of need in 2014 were the least important of those reforms.

The universal offer requires all staff to have thorough and ongoing training far more substantial than these proposals. It also requires embedded access to therapists and psychologists, small class sizes and accessible buildings. Without this, it will work no better than today’s universal offer (which already exists).

4. How can we ensure that children in the Targeted layer are best supported?

The lack of individual assessment is a red flag for me here. This proposal relies on teaching staff with minimal training and expertise determining what are suitable interventions. It is no different to the current SEND support expected in mainstream school and what was historically called “School Action”. While in theory, it is welcome, it can only work if the individual assessment and identification of need and provision is conducted by experts to ensure that these small interventions will succeed.  It’s also important for this not to be the first step towards needed specialist support. The current “assess, plan, do, review” delays access to needed provision for too many children. While it allows a school to gather evidence, that evidence is predicated on the deterioration in a child’s learning and emotional wellbeing.

There is no legal duty in your proposal to deliver the contents of an ISP which is extremely concerning, nor does the document explain true accountability. The problem with the current system is not in the legislative requirements on schools and local authorities, but on the accountability that should ensure they follow those requirements. Increasingly, families are having to resort to SEND tribunals, but also Judicial Reviews because local authorities and schools are not delivering provision that has been identified as necessary.

5. How can we ensure that children in the Targeted Plus layer are best supported

Similarly to the Targeted layer, the delivery of identified, necessary provision must be supported by a robust accountability system. The last few decades in SEND have shown that the only truly accountable system is that provided by the law, be it the SEND tribunal or the high court. So I would like to see similar legal accountability for all layers of SEND provision, from targeted (maybe even universal) through to specialist provision with an EHCP. This, rather than removing legal accountability at the EHCP level , would better ensure that children’s needs are met.

I believe that the Experts at Hand are required at the targeted layer in order to ensure need is identified correctly. At targeted plus, the experts will be needed in a hands on manner, if not weekly at least regularly enough that children have a relationship with those experts.

Inclusion bases are not new or a particular reform. They are welcome IF they are appropriately staffed with expert teachers and practitioners. They must not create a lower level of education staffed by LSAs.

The aspiration of these bases is welcome, but will take years to develop and no realistic transition plan has been described. There is also no realistic funding or training proposal that would allow this vision to transpire.

There is a need for vast cultural change in mainstream schools and the curriculum to allow this vision any hope… but no proposal for how to make that change happen.

6. How can we ensure that children in the Specialist layer are best supported?

I have huge, enormous, dread-inducing concerns about the nationally defined special provision packages. By definition, children with this level and complexity of need rarely fit into predefined boxes. They need specialist, individual assessment to define their needs and the provision they require. there is huge evidence of good practice, but overwhelmingly, where outcomes are less than expected this is because children have waited too long to access that much needed support. This proposal of packages takes away the child-centred process that we know to be crucial to support and there is nothing in the proposal that gives any confidence that a child would access this level sooner than they currently do. The fact that the white paper is unable to define such a basic term as “complex needs” is deeply worrying as it belies a lack of understanding of the complexity of children I support professionally on a daily basis. It also mentions support such as physiotherapy and AAC which should be available as part of the universal offer, not merely at this level. This section demonstrates a profound lack of understanding about SEND by its authors and is deeply worrying. The format of EHCPs is vague and unclear – the proposal suggests they would guarantee statutory entitlement to a package which suggests that the previous promise of ISPs does not have the same statutory backing. I do not recognise this proposal as one that will reduce numbers of EHCPs.

7. How do you think early years settings, schools, and colleges can best support the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people?

In the context of existing SEND in a child, the current delays in meeting that need often cause ongoing mental health difficulties. These cannot be supported by a school due to the complexity of need, and particularly if the school environment itself is the cause of the mental health difficulties. Supporting mental health difficulties in the early years is a highly complex issue and must be led by clinical services HOWEVER… these lead to SEND and difficulty accessing learning. Mental health cannot be dissociated from SEND for this reason but also because mental health difficulties in and of themselves are often a special educational need, impacting a child’s ability to learn, attend school or integrate into the school community. There is a history of trying to dissociate mental health difficulties from SEND which was very detrimental to children. That said, this question also needs to be considered from a mainstream perspective. Buildings need to be suitable, School staff must be supported in their own mental health, class sizes likely need to be smaller and professional experts (far beyond ELSA) need to be embedded into schools to support children with mental health difficulties, especially in light of need linked to a fast-paced societal change (social media, internet use, climate change, increasing world conflicts etc).

8. Do you agree that the refreshed ‘areas of development’ will support educators to understand and address barriers to learning and participation? Please explain your answer

No. The phrase “areas of development” is already too confusing. We are talking about special educational need, so “areas of need” should stay. The changes you propose are largely semantic and a waste of time and energy. However, there are important needs missing from your diagram including the communication difficulties experienced by verbal autistic children. This need, when unmet, is a significant source of mental health difficulties that then increase a child’s SEND. The sensory section is far too vague and makes no mention of visual or hearing impairment – a group of children who often find themselves in mainstream school effectively excluded from learning and social interaction as the support that should be available under current legislation is not. And strangely there is little to describe children with learning disabilities… the executive function description is extremely vague. The complete lack of mention of mental health need is extremely concerning, suggesting that mental illness is not a special educational need. We know this not to be true. The proposal states that only SEMH need lends itself to clinical intervention, without considering the need for physiotherapy, occupational therapy and other clinical interventions for physical health needs, and speech and language therapy for communication needs. This move towards separating mental from physical health and diminishing its impact on the ability to access learning is deeply worrying.

9. What arrangements would best support effective joint working between early years providers, Best Start Family Hubs, health, local authorities, and parents for children with SEND in the early years?

The proposals outline a well recognised aspiration, but there is no clear idea in the proposal about supporting joint working. Families in the early years NEED a key worker who acts as their single point of contact who understand the whole system and ensure that early identification happens. Importantly, there must be a clear route for families of very young children to get access to identification and support without the necessity of attending a nursery. Much SEND can be identified well before nursery age but the support currently available, in spite of acknowledgment that early identification is key, is not sufficient to do that.

Joint working is dependent on a system of accountability that does not exist. An arrangement that makes joint working possible requires administrative joining with clear responsibilities and systems of accountability so that one service cannot simply bat a child to another.

10. How can the early years foundation stage (EYFS) two-year old progress check and the Healthy Child Programme development review be improved so that children’s needs are identified and supported more quickly? Please share examples.

The 2 year check is often too late – in fact it’s is a 27th month check. My daughter raised concerns about her 2 children from the age of 3 months. They were eventually seen at around 18 months and slowly put on the pathway of identification. Importantly, identification does not currently lead to meaningful support. My grandson was diagnosed with autism just before his 3rd birthday and has received less than 10 hours of support in total. The daily, embedded speech and language and occupational therapy support he requires does not exist and is only in place due to my daughter’s intelligence and lived experience as an autistic girls who was failed by the system.

Support for very young children is made much harder for disabled parents as it relies on drop-ins and settings that are not accessible.

Once identified, support is contingent on long waiting lists meaning that the child misses out on the key benefit of early intervention.

Direct support such as SLT or services like Portage have a significantly beneficial impact, but are not available readily enough.

Again, it’s critical to have a single point of contact for families navigating this system at the early years as it crosses over several services and joint working is imperative. At the same time, these families are new to the navigation of public services and cannot learn the system well enough in time for their child to benefit. We do see parents who have several children becoming more adept over time.

14. How should the Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCO) role evolve to better meet the needs of children and young people with SEND?

The SENCO role is critical and those fulfilling it are stretched far beyond reasonable capacity. It is imperative that the SENCO be a member of the senior leadership team but separate from the headteacher.

SENCOs require significantly more training than they currently do to include better understanding of SEND, how to identify and support the wide range of SEND in their setting. They also need training to be up to date with legal issues linked to SEND, including SEND law, the equality act and legislation pertaining to social care.

They also need training to understand how to access support in their locality, including outreach services, therapists, specialist teacher etc. They must have the authority to determine when such additional services are required, which means that they will need qualifications that put them on a level playing field with professionals such as educational psychologists. All this is necessary if they are to properly meet the needs of children with SEND.

For SENCOs working at KS4 transition and above, an understanding of the various routes towards adulthood available to young people with SEND will be critical.

15. What would provide assurance for families that an Individual Support Plan (ISP) is high quality and contains the essential information?

An ISP must be created following individual assessment of a child’s needs by appropriate and trained professionals. This will include teachers, psychologists, SLT and OT and other therapists such as physiotherapists and mental health practitioners. Teachers alone do NOT have the expertise to determine the nature of a child’s SEND and the appropriate provision they require to make progress.

In order to be high quality, an ISP needs a description of a child’s needs and required provision based on that expert individual assessment AND it needs to be enforceable with accountability that sits outside the school.

The promise of a “digital” ISP is very concerning. We have seen 20 years of promise across the NHS that digital systems will allow for ease and visibility to benefit patients. This is still a long way from reality. Currently, local authority IT systems are so disparate that one part of the SEND service cannot see what another part sees, and social care are on systems so different that they may as well be in a different country. The “digital” nature of this ISP is irrelevant compared to the need for individual professional assessment and true enforceability which can only be provided with legal backing.

16. How can we ensure Individual Support Plans are clear, concise and practical for professionals to use?

If ISPs are created based on professional individual assessment, providing a format for professionals in which needs are clearly paired with recommended provision will allow the correct information to be included. The provision must be specific and clear, in stark contrast with recommendations made by many LA-employed professionals in EHCP, where provision is so vague as to be incomprehensible.

ISPs should include a one page profile of the child that should be customisable by the child and provide a quick introduction. The remainder of the ISP’s content will depend on the needs of the child. For children with very complex needs, it will necessarily be longer and less concise.

it must be understood that a plan that is limited in length for the ease of professionals will cause important information to be left out in some cases which could be catastrophic.

ISPs must be clear and specific. Concise is a relative term and the lesser of the priorities.

17. How can we best support transition for young people with SEND, so that they are well supported into post-16 provision and further education, training or employment?

Teachers in secondary school needs training to understand post-16 options for young people. This should form part of core teacher training for all young people. However, options for young people with SEND can be significantly more complex and teachers will need specific training for this as part of their weekly SEND training.

Many young people with SEND lag behind their peers in terms of daily functioning skills and these are not supported as part of the mainstream or universal offer. This is an important consideration, to include things like travel training, budgeting education and self-advocacy.

Colleges need to consider that young people with SEND are likely to need more support from their parents and should more easily be open to working with parents and communicating with them.

Employers needs training across the country to understand the value of schemes such as supported internships.

There is no doubt that many young people with SEND take several years longer to mature than their peers. Therefore it is crucial to provide educational opportunities that last into the mid-20s, to include serious academic pathways as well as employment pathways. Some youngsters are very capable of achieving high A level results if given a few more years. They are then able to consider higher education, often leading to broader career options.

18. How can we make sure that every area can meet the full range of the needs of children and young people through Inclusion Bases?

It is simply impossible for an inclusion base to meet the full range of needs and this question is utterly baffling as the white paper specifically acknowledges that some children will require more specialist provision. There is not enough clarity about the proposal’s understanding of “specialist bases” to answer this question properly.

An increasing number of children cannot tolerate the mainstream environment, especially in  secondary school. There is no consideration of how the whole education system needs to change to make inclusion a reality, and until that is done, inclusion bases will not be suitable because these children will not be able to access them.

If the specialist bases are specialised, suitable education at the local school is not guaranteed. Children with SEND have a vast range of often conflicting need and they sit across all age ranges. Inclusion bases will have to include many different rooms with experts and specialist teachers to ensure that those children’s needs are met where they are able to access the site at all.

There is a very significant risk that these bases will become nothing more than exclusion zones or holding places staffed by LSAs rather than teachers and children with SEND will be more isolated than ever before.

19. How can we make sure that Inclusion Bases help children and young people succeed in mainstream settings?

The white paper does not clarify what it means by “success”. I would argue that success means the ability to access learning at the pace and level that is appropriate to a child’s learning ability. It also means the ability to access extra-curricular activities, to have a sense of belonging, to make friends. It means the ability to use reasonable adjustments without fear of bullying, to be accepted by peers.

Inclusion bases cannot do this. If the inclusion base is staffed by highly specialist teachers, therapeutic professionals and with the appropriate environment for the children it is supporting, this will go some way to overcoming the barriers placed by SEND. However, if a child is attending an inclusion base, they are by definition not with their mainstream peers.  This means that they are missing out on teaching, or socialising, and they are by definition excluded from their community.

Inclusion bases can be extremely successful for a specific cohort of children, and there are great examples of good practice. However, professionals running them are very clear that their success depends on being selective with the students they accept. Adding children with more complex SEND would have a hugely negative impact for those students already succeeding there.

20. Through the Experts at Hand offer, we want to ensure that mainstream settings can get quick specialist support for children and young people. What arrangements are needed between local area partners (education, health, social care) to deliver this Experts at Hand offer effectively?

The principle is welcome, but it is difficult to see how different it is from the aspirations currently in place. The limitation of the current system is not lack of such aspirations, but a workforce that does not exist, and complete lack of resource to fund these experts.

The white paper already limits the expertise of this workforce to “Targeted Plus” and “specialists”… this is in direct contradiction to the acknowledged importance of early identification and early intervention.

There is considerable pressure being brought on school staff, using experts at hand to advise, but with an expectation that school staff will deliver any therapy. School staff are already overstretched and under-resourced. Asking them to deliver therapy for which they have no training is unacceptable.

The amount of Experts at Hand time mentioned is simply not enough to meet current need, let alone the massively increased need that will happen when fewer children are able to access specialist schools.

We do not have the educational psychologists, speech and language or occupational therapists to meet this promise and each of these roles takes many years to qualify.

Should each school have an onsite EP, SLT, OT and counsellor, this would be a phenomenal offer and would allow more children to stay in mainstream setting, but that is not what is being proposed.

21. What needs to be in place so that children and young people with low incidence, highly complex needs can always access the right specialist placement?

Firstly, I need to ask why you are excluding the needs of children with higher incidence, highly complex needs? I work with children who have experienced significant, long-lasting school related trauma and are left with very complex needs, often accompanied by average or above average academic ability. These children cannot access a mainstream environment and none of the proposals here address this problem because the mainstream environment and curriculum are not under reform. Yet they will, with the right education, be significant actors for the future of our country.

Every child with complex needs requires a holistic, individual assessment which identifies their SEND and the provision that they require to meet them. The current system of EHCPs addresses this well and only fails because mainstream education is under-resourced and SEND is incompatible with the pressures on schools to secure high grades in exams and unerring compliance.

We need far more specialist schools that can cater for a range of specialist SEND and offer inclusive, suitable education closer to home for disabled children. Inclusion bases cannot meet the need that I see every day in my work.

22. How can Specialist Provision Packages be designed to effectively support the main types of need we currently recognise?

We have learned through painful experience of children with SEND being failed for generations, that individual assessment leading to individually considered provision is critical for children with complex needs. Their very complexity makes them the “square pegs” that do not fit the “round holes” of mainstream education. The proposal of specialist provision packages is merely designing holes of such precise shapes that it is almost guaranteed that for too many of the most complex children will once again fall through the net, or stay excluded from their entitlement to a suitable education because this proposal removes their right to correct identification and support. Predetermined specialist provision packages are  by definition the wrong approach to meeting the needs of children with complex needs. The only way to support these children’s needs is through individual and specific provision. Additionally, this question simultaneously refers to children with the “most complex need” and refers to packages to support the “main types of needs”. All too often, the most complex children fall outside the main type of need, which is precisely why they require such specificity of provision.

23. We propose that EHCPs will guarantee educational provision set out in a Specialist Provision Package, with day-to-day provision captured in Individual Support Plans. What is needed to make these proposals work effectively?

This proposal removes the legal rights enshrined in the current EHCP system that ensure children the the most complex needs (all children with EHCPs have extremely complex needs – the system ensures that this is the case) are supported in the most suitable way. Tribunal figures confirm that the provision described in EHCPs is suitable and proportional. If and when schools and local authorities fail to deliver this provision, families have legal routes to accountability. If local authorities were properly resourced, EHCPs would not be challenged at tribunal, and the failure to deliver would not be challenged by judicial review.

This proposal suggests that we should resolve this failure to deliver suitable educational provision by removing the legal accountability currently in place. Provision captured in ISPs has no route of accountability according to your proposal, leaving children with no legal entitlement to a suitable education. This is a shocking retreat of disability rights, taking us back to a time when disabled children were considered to be uneducable.

Schools complaints procedures fail to secure independent investigation of injustice on a daily basis. Beyond the school’s own procedures, no mechanism exists to examine a school’s decision, so the notion that delivery of provision for the most vulnerable children should be left to under-resourced, fairly small organisations without external oversight is the opposite of effectiveness.

24. We propose creating a more direct route to Specialist Provision Packages and EHCP assessments for children under 5 with complex needs. How can we make sure this works in practice?

Swift action to identify and support very young children is necessary, and I would highly recommend adding children with a limited life expectancy to this list. The current legislation offers a 20 week process from request for EHCP to final plan. This allows for a multi-disciplinary approach, individual assessment including strong input from health services and educational psychologists. The only effective means of supporting children like this with the early identification and intervention they need is through that individual, expert assessment followed by a clear description of the specialist educational provision they require to learn and make progress. Should this have been put in place as described in CAFA 2014, we would likely have more children in mainstream school. A swifter process for these particularly vulnerable groups would require a greater workforce specifically aimed at them.

 I do not believe that the route should be to packages, particularly in these groups as they are very likely to be highly complex and individual children.

The other necessary resource to support these children are more specialist nurseries that offer direct speech and language therapy and occupational therapy as a minimum. These nurseries must be accessible for children so that we are not putting small children in taxis to travel unacceptable travel time.

25. What would you expect to be considered as part of the needs assessment, for example evidence and expert or professional input?

A needs assessment must be individualised and conducted in person. Advice and evidence must be gathered from the child as much as is possible, following the same thorough support as that offered an adult undergoing a social care assessment under the Care Act 2014. Parental evidence is key and must be considered with the same level of seriousness as that of any professional. School advice and information regarding interventions, attendance and academic attainment is key, but insufficient to advise about SEND. Educational psychologists must assess the child in person and this should include standardised testing looking at cognitive ability, executive function and specific learning difficulties (including dyslexia). Other professionals such as speech and language therapists should be advising on communication difference and occupational therapists will advise on coordination, sensory processing and a child’s daily functioning. Mental health  assessment by a psychologist or psychiatrist should be conducted where there is suspicion of mental health difficulties.

These assessments should be readily available early in a child’s SEND journey, through public services. However, where services do not assess, private reports must be considered when written by professionals belonging to a recognised professional body.

These assessments should inform the contents of an ISP, delivery of which must be legally enforceable at ALL levels of provision.

26. What factors should LAs take into account in proposing to parents and young people a list of potential settings to name on a plan?

Since 1944, parents in England have had the right to name a preference for their children’s schooling. Parents of disabled children were excluded from this until 1980. The current proposals row that hard-won right of equality back by limiting provision of specialist schools using the vague mechanism of specialist provision packages, making it significantly more difficult to access a school out of area (which will increase the reality of a post-code lottery) and removing the tribunal’s ability to name a school against a local authority’s wishes. This is a tragic repealing of rights that go a small way to levelling the playing field for our most vulnerable children.

In direct answer to the question, LAs should provide a clear and comprehensive list of all schools, both maintained and independent. Once a child’s needs have been comprehensively identified through individual assessment, the specified provision should naturally lead to appropriate settings.

27. What information and support do parents need to make a decision about which setting will be best for their child?

Current legislation precludes an LA from advising parents about suitable settings. Instead, the LA makes its own determination, largely weighted by questions of resource rather than the child’s needs. This leaves parents having to research schools with little to no support and is entirely inequitable. Parents need transparent information about all schools, both mainstream, those with inclusion bases and specialist. This must include maintained and independent schools merely because there is massive insufficiency of specialist places in the maintained sector. Schools must clearly state a description of their cohort of students in terms of age, SEND catered for, academic ability. They must also state what therapeutic support is offered, class size, staff:pupil ratio and pastoral support.

Importantly, the right to parental preference must remain enshrined in law. The current duty on LAs to consider public funds is sufficient to ensure that more costly settings are only agreed when no other school can meet need.

More importantly, we need more specialist schools at the same time as investing in a significantly reformed mainstream education system that entirely rethinks the role of disabled children at its heart.

28. What do you think is the right maximum length of time for a temporary placement in Alternative Provision (AP) schools? Please explain your rationale.

The phrase “alternative provision schools” is an oxymoron. By definition, children who require alternative provision are not able to access education in a school setting. Those children whose needs can never be met in a school should have an EOTAS package as is already set out in law. The current proposal ignores these children entirely which is a grave error.

Many children dependent on alternative provision are in this situation because LAs and schools have failed to properly identify and meet their SEND. In many of the cases I support, schools have not been able to access experts to identify and offer provision (EP, SLT, OT, MH). Subsequently, the LA has refused to conduct an assessment of need on the basis that the school had failed to do what they “should” (but could not do). These children are left in a loophole and must rely on s19 of the Education Act 1996 – which is all too frequently not applied and parents are left no recourse but judicial review. In other cases, the LA recognises that a specialist school is required but is unable to find a suitable space – another confirmation that more specialist places are required.

Alternative provision should be temporary, but this cannot be measured as a standard. If the education system and the SEND system are fit for purpose, AP would be extremely rare for SEND children.

29. We have set out our plans to regulate Independent Special Schools (ISS) sector. Do you agree that these proposed changes will lead to suitable placements being available at a fair cost? Please explain why.

The government has no credible leg to stand on with this proposal until it has resourced maintained specialist SEND provision appropriately. Regulation of independent special schools is appropriate where companies and overseas funds profit from our most vulnerable children. However, the current system makes these schools essential to their education and their hope of independence in adulthood.

Now is not the time to cap fees for independent schools for the same reason. It is enough to look around the country at this time of proposed, huge SEND reform, and see increasing numbers of independent schools seeking DfE registration to know that the government is hostage to these schools until they develop suitable provision.

Regulation and proper oversight of such institutions is very important. But it is also important to understand the fallacy of the argument put forward that these schools are “money-grabbing”. Provision at these schools is not comparable to existing maintained specialist schools. Independent schools offer onsite therapeutic support, often smaller class sizes and a broader range of academic options than maintained schools. They are not like for like and until maintained schools truly deliver provision that is required by our children, the independent sector will be needed.

30. How should settings be held accountable for how they spend their Inclusive Mainstream funding?

I work with a variety of schools daily to help them support children with SEND and manage their funding. This is more difficult with mainstream schools who often do not know how to use the funding to support a child. Pooling SEND funding means making decisions at the beginning of the school year based on a general understanding of their cohort (very much the model described in the proposal). However, mainstream schools are notoriously unable to identify need early (they are not experts in this field), and the need of their SEND children can be particularly complex as these children do not fit easily in the “severe” SEND categories – in fact this makes their needs far more complex. Much of the funding disappears into the current “experts at hand” model and I do not see anything in the proposal that suggests schools would be funded well enough to support the children with SEND in their settings. Settings should be held accountable, and this must start at an individual level so that the necessary funding is provided to the school. Accountability is meaningless without sufficient resource.

The starting point must be individual assessment by experts. This leads to specific required provision that can be costed, and a school would then be able to present a clear costed plan for their SEND requirements for the year. An external auditor must be appointed to undertake independent examinations each year to ensure the funding is being spent appropriately on the children who need it.

31. Do you agree that more SEND funding should sit directly within mainstream budgets?  Please explain why

The complexity of SEND funding is a problem which may in itself be costing a great deal. But this is not the starting point. Any efforts to resolve the system such that children’s needs are met and they are supported to their best educational outcome and independence in adulthood starts with individual, expert assessment that leads to clear, specified required provision. This provision must be clear enough to be costed. Once this is done, a school’s SEND budget becomes transparent at which point receiving direct funding from a central body seems far more practical than the current layered system of funding. When a child is newly identified with SEND, seeking more resource from the LA is an exhausting process that adds delay to support. A new system predicated on individual need would benefit from a clear, central body that can increase funding as/if new children are identified through the school year.

We are many years away from a consistent school picture with SEND. Schools with good practice attract more families and those schools require more funding. But this cannot be determined by wishful thinking of robotic caricatures of “types” of SEND child.

32. In relation to pooled funding, we propose that every school becomes part of a local SEND group. Do you agree that this proposal aligns with our aim for all schools to be part of high-quality, community-based trusts?

My experience of academy trusts is patchy at best. Sometimes, pooling of schools informs good practice and supports school staff with shared knowledge that they all benefit from. More often, I see extraordinary schools weighed down with pressure from the leadership of the group to focus on the metrics that Ofsted are far more interested in than SEND: attendance, behaviour, academic attainment. The autonomy offered each school and each trust creates pockets of independent practice and this proposal would increase this problem that effectively increases the disparity of support between different parts of the country.

Pooling funding would inevitably, in my experience, lead to the schools with the greatest concentration of SEND struggling to meet their pupils’ needs and move yet further away from the necessary focus on individual children’s assessed requirements. This proposal yet again tries to paint an idealised picture of children who fit neatly into a box and whose needs can magically be met and “fixed” by using one of the fixed shape and size of “plaster” available in the yet to be designed inclusion standard, or provision packages.

It is a fairy tale vision of SEND that does not reflect the messy complexity of the children I support every day.

33. How should disagreements about membership, provision, or funding in groups of schools for SEND be resolved?

Please see my comments above about the current problems in multi academy trusts. These disagreements do not get resolved. Disagreements of this sort only arise when resource and funding do not meet the required need. The solution is to assess individual children’s SEND needs, determine specific, costed provision and ensure that funding is sufficient to deliver it. If need is identified early (by experts), provision is cheaper in the long term.

There has been no mention of the role played by “experts at hand” in this section and they must be at its core because they have the expertise to determine the necessary provision required to support a child.

Dispute resolution in the school system is notoriously difficult, adversarial and ineffective, whether it is a parent making a complaint or a staff member trying to raise a concern. Whistle-blowing in schools rarely succeeds and individuals are almost always left with no option but to leave the school or entire trust. I have no faith whatsoever that schools or MATs have the ability to manage such disagreements, and I believe that widening the group to more local schools will make equitable resolution to the benefit of SEND children largely impossible.

Again… the only solution is to identify need, identify specific provision that leads to a proposed budget. And this budget must be resource adequately.

34. How can we ensure the most effective use of these local partnership groups

The consultation document does not explain what it means by a local partnership group. The phrase is only used in these questions. It references local area partnerships currently in place. The system is currently extremely adversarial, as each partner protects its insufficient resource budget and passes responsibility on to another. Local partnership groups must have serious and equal parent carer members and young people representatives. They should include schools and all schools should be able to make representations if required. The local authority is an important member, as are health services (both physical and mental) and social services. But simply adding administrative meetings is not effective. The effective use of such a group is to ensure that individual children are being properly and expertly assessed such that the group has a realistic understanding of NEED which then leads to a clear understanding of the cost of that need against the resource available. Only then can serious discussions be had about bridging the gap. Lived experience must sit at the heart of these groups and be considered with the same level of expertise as any other member.

35. Which stakeholders are important for the success of local partnership groups, and why?

Parent carer and young people must sit at the heart of these groups and must be considered peers – they should not be expected to give up their time for free when they sit alongside officers and headteachers who command significant salaries. They represent the reality of a life lived with SEND and must inform everything else.

Schools should be represented by staff working directly with SEND children.

Health services should be represented by each service involved rather than an overseeing manager.

Social services currently fail to identify and support children who meet “child in need” category as disabled children but do not meet local criteria for support. These children may be supported by workers trained in safeguarding issues and this is often catastrophic for families. Social services are important stakeholders in these groups, but their own role needs serious consideration as part of the SEND system.

The voluntary sector is crucial  as it delivers enormous parts of SEND provision. Early years providers must be represented and individual providers must have the opportunity to join the group as needed. This may include midwifery representatives as needed. Post 16 institutions, both mainstream and specialist are key to the partnership, as are employers who play a role in determining the educational priorities that allow SEND children to enter the workforce.

However, a partnership is only successful if it has a clear agenda and the resource with which to follow it through.

36. How can we build stronger collaboration and a culture of improvement through local SEND strategic plans?

Strategic plans rely on complete, truthful data. So the first requirement is to face the extent of SEND we are facing right now. By assessing children individually to understand what their needs and requirements are, we will build a true picture of need. This allows for the development not only of a strategic plan and an understanding of the true resource needed, but would also support the investigation by researchers of the change in our society that has led to the apparent increase in need. We know that children are attending school more than they were 20 years ago because we monitor attendance far more closely – how much has this allowed existing SEND to come to light?

This exercise then allows leadership groups to determine workforce and infrastructure requirements, which can then lead to a plan. Initially, this will involve difficult decisions that leave some children without the provision they need to reach independent adulthood (which of course has a life long impact on the adult social care budget). But sweeping need under a carpet is not the solution. LAs that currently do this find themselves with high numbers of appeals they lose. Removing the right of appeal will only make this situation worse, and that will be seen by increasing numbers of child suicide, parent illness and suicide and adults requiring life long support from social care.

37. What information, advice and guidance can best support children, young people and their families to ensure greater fairness across the system?

The SEND system is complex and sits across all aspects of a child’s life: education, health services, social services, the voluntary sector, benefits systems and more. The current local offer websites are mazes that are impossible to navigate for a family new to the system. Information and advice must be transparent and complete (including information about independent provision), but guidance is key. SENDIASS services are excellent, but massively underfunded so do not deliver what was promised. Families almost always need guidance from someone experienced in the system to navigate it correctly and effectively and the system relies on their ignorance to save money.

All information – including legislation which is a key requirement to a parent’s understanding of the system – must be written in plain English with accessibility in mind. A reading age of 7 years is considered to be accessible. ISPs and EHCPs should be specific and written with no room for interpretation. They should be accessible to the child as much as is possible, including easy read versions where needed.

England has an army of independent SEND advocates, often with lived experience supporting families. This role should be build in to the system to ensure fairness and should be informed by lived experience. This role was identified as crucial in the Pathfinder programme leading up to CAFA 2014 but not included due to financial consequences. It would have been an investment and can still be.

38. Do you agree that a SEND specialist (e.g. a SENCO) should sit on the school complaint panel, when the complaint relates to SEND support and provision? Please explain why.

The notion that accountability is possible through the school complaints system is an absolute fallacy and one of the most dangerous proposals in this consultation. Any complaint about SEND support and provision must be investigated by an expert in SEND, but this does not describe the majority of SENCOs. They have minimal training and are at heart teachers with additional administrative burdens. The proposal leaves identification of SEND to teachers who do not have the expertise to do so appropriately. It also leaves decisions about provision to schools who do not have the expertise to make them. Complaints will abound. The schools complaint is so internal that they are rarely resolved satisfactorily as leadership and governors have their staff’s wellbeing as their priority. Stage 3 of a complaint typically involves an independent person chosen by the school and therefore not truly independent. Further escalation does not allow for investigation of the decision, only the process. SEND complaints about identification or delivery of provision are hugely complex and emotive. They MUST be informed by expert, individual assessment and investigated by wholly independent experts. In fact, the current appeal system should be applied to all children with an ISP to ensure that provision is delivered. Removing legal accountability guarantees a failure of the system to these children as is borne out by the fact that parents are forced to appeal and JR due to LAs not following the law.

39. This consultation outlines a series of measures intended to reform the SEND system. Some of these measures have already been finalised, and this is clearly indicated within the document. With this in mind, is there anything further you would like to contribute to help inform the remaining proposals that are still under consideration?

The proposal indicates a significant shift away from hard-won legal rights for disabled children. These  seem to be the measures that have already been finalised and is the most worrying aspect of this “consultation”. The government’s narrative of “we want to listen” is not borne out by the evasive answers and the decision to block comments or delete social media posts.

Disabled people often quote an important phrase developed with the NHS: “no decision about me without me”. Unfortunately, parent carers across the country have said clearly that this process is being done TO them and their children. The proposals to remove individual assessment, to water down access to experts and to squeeze children into a box of predetermined (yet not clearly specified) packages is profoundly concerning and my daily work leads me to the firm belief that it cannot work. Should the proposals go ahead, I expect significant numbers of teachers to leave the profession. Children who are doing well at school will be negatively impacted by children whose needs cannot be met there. I fear that a generation of children will be abandoned and will reappear in adult social care with high levels of need throughout their lives. I fear and am confident that we will see avoidable child deaths.

Legal entitlement to a suitable education determined via individual assessment is NECESSARY. Schools and authorities must then enforce that law, leaving an appeal system to hold them accountable.