The long-awaited government review of provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) received a cautious welcome from across the sector when it was published in May.
Responses to a 13-week consultation on recommendations made in the green paper, which closed at the end of July, raises questions over whether the papers’ raft of proposals will strike the “fine balance” between tackling inconsistencies in the quality of provision and reducing costs for already over-stretched local authorities, while also addressing new support challenges in the aftermath of the pandemic (see below).
Latest statistics from the Department for Education show that the total number of children with education, health and care plans (EHCPs) has increased by more than 40,000 over the past year.
As of January 2022, there were 473,255 children with plans in place, compared with 430,697 the previous year, marking a 9.9 per cent increase and making the need for proposals to be supported across the board more necessary than ever.
Analysis of responses to the consultation from key sector bodies reveals five key issues experts want to see addressed by ministers before reforms are finalised.
1. Mainstream inclusion
Greater inclusion of SEND support in mainstream schools is a key focus of the green paper which recommends a new legal duty on councils to introduce “local inclusion plans” across early years, schools and post-16 education with input from health and care services.
The Association of Directors of Children’s Services supports greater focus on inclusion, noting in its consultation response that problems with the current SEND system “has resulted in a drift away from inclusion in mainstream education”.
This in turn has caused greater pressures on funding across the system as well as “an over-emphasis on securing EHCPs”, the ADCS response states.
Meanwhile, the Disabled Children’s Partnership (DCP) notes that inclusion plans could “create clear and consistent expectations of schools, colleges and services without undermining rights”. however, it calls for greater clarity about how much offers will be integrated into current systems.
Teaching unions, the National Education Union (NEU) and NASUWT, say there is “too little detail about the teacher training” relating to a greater focus on SEND in mainstream schools.
“We would like to see training rooted in understanding of child development across the key stages as this links to identifying children and young people who are not developing as ‘expected’,” the NEU says, calling for “greater emphasis on growing teacher confidence in working in inclusive classes” rather than an “overemphasis” on supporting pupils to meet development markers such as the Phonics Speaking Check.
2. Funding
The green paper puts forward proposals for a national SEND framework for councils, which includes tariffs for high need.
The DCP warns that while the green paper “attempts to strike a balance between improving support for children and families and controlling costs, we are concerned that the latter is given too much priority”.
“Despite plans to increase the high needs budget, the green paper does not acknowledge the real terms reductions in expenditure in other parts of the system – including local authority core budgets; social care; school budgets; and health,” the partnership adds, noting “these reductions in themselves may have led to increased pressure on the high needs budget”.
Meanwhile, the ADCS says the paper “does not acknowledge the baked in costs in the system which will continue for some time – potentially until all children currently in the system reach 25”.
It echoes the DCP’s view that basing reforms on increasing the high needs budget will “inhibit the implementation of the reform programme and continue to pose an existential threat to the financial viability of many local authorities”.
ADCS calls for the current SEND budget system to be replaced by a “reformed funding formula that is based on pupil need which includes a clear SEN budget”.
3. EHCP changes
The green paper suggests moving EHCPs online alongside proposals to offer parents a pre-defined list of appropriate settings tailored to their child’s needs through a digitised system.
The standardisation of EHCPs could “result in the development of a burdensome and bureaucratic document”, warns head teachers union NASUWT.
Meanwhile, the NEU says plans to offer set options to parents for their child’s provision needs “much greater consideration”, citing concerns from parents over limitations on options for their children and from schools with strong SEND provision around increased pressure on resources compared with schools not rated highly for SEND support.
Cost could also be a deciding factor in what parents are offered, the NEU warns, saying: “There is a risk that local authorities will feel pressured to omit some providers, such as specialist further education colleges, for financial reasons rather than on the basis of ability to meet need.”
4. Early years support
Proposals put forward in the green paper to train 5,000 early years special educational needs co-ordinators (SENCOs) is not “anywhere near ambitious enough to effectively address early identification, which we know is vitally important to outcomes for children”, adds the NEU in its response to the review.
It says: “We see nothing in the proposals to improve the quality of early years provision to better enable early years practitioners to identify and meet needs at an earlier point in children’s development.”
This is despite a recent report from Ofsted noting a huge increase in the number of children waiting for support for speech and language delays after missing out on access to provision during the pandemic (see below).
Meanwhile, it warns that recommending new family hubs as centres for SEND support for children aged nought to five “won’t work”.
Describing the scheme as creating a “cheap version of children’s centres” – more than 1,000 of which have closed due to underfunding over the past decade – the NEU says that there must be recognition within the green paper that family hubs “need to be funded properly and staffed with professionals whose work spans education, health and care”.
Work by children’s centres, which were often attached to schools to ease the transition for children in mainstream education “led to provision for the child’s SEND needs being in place at the earliest stage of schooling, resulting in improved outcomes”, the response states.
5. SEND tribunals
The green paper also recommends plans to “streamline” the redress process around SEND complaints, meaning tribunals will only be used for “most challenging cases”.
The ADCS supports this “reframing of the system”, saying that it will become “more proportional, used as an option of last resort and only under certain circumstances”.
The current system, which allows all decisions around support laid out in EHCP plans to be contested, offers a level of “open access to a judge-led process that is not seen in other parts of the public sector”, it adds.
Meanwhile, the DCP accuses the government of “betraying a lack of confidence in its own analysis/proposals” over its plans to reduce access to tribunals.
“Why does the government need to introduce measures to make it (even) harder for parents to get EHCPs/restrict access to the tribunal if it is confident that reforms will ensure better identification and early intervention?” the partnership asks.
The Department for Education is yet to announce next steps following the end of the consultation.
However, the residing call from across the sector appears to be that without sufficient funding for SEND provision and training for staff, the changes recommended in the green paper will not offer the support needed for increasing numbers of children in need to extra support.
EXPERT VIEW
Identifying speech and language problems is crucial after Covid
By Louisa Reeves, head of impact and research, I CAN
Talking and understanding language are essential life skills which underpin teaching and learning throughout the education system.
Children and young people who struggle with talking and understanding language – whether because of environmental factors or due to a lifelong condition like DLD (developmental language disorder), autism or cerebral palsy – need support to avoid negative outcomes both for their learning and for their mental health.
The first step is being able to measure how many children are struggling with their speech and language development.
The government funded the development of the Early Language Identification Measure (ELIM) to be used in the two-year developmental check by health visitor teams as part of the Better Start in Speech, Language and Communication guidance.
Published in 2021, this is not widely used, and data isn’t gathered at either a local or national level. We propose that the ELIM should be rolled out more widely and the data collected so a national picture of need at two years old is established.
But some children’s speech and language challenges do not become apparent until they start school.
Teaching staff have tools they can use to track children’s literacy and numeracy development, but they don’t have access to readily available, evidenced and easy to use tools to track children’s speech and language. We are calling on the government to use a similar commissioning approach to the ELIM by involving academics and teachers to develop a freely accessible tracking tool to be used at the start of KS1 and KS2.
This would mean that schools can identify and plan for the children in their school who need additional support. Gathering this data at a local and national level would mean workforce planning would be informed by accurate information on the needs of children.
