Panellists
Amanda Allard, strategic director, The Council for Disabled Children
Amanda has worked in children’s policy both as a researcher and campaigner for the last 30 years; first for The Children’s Society and NCH (now Action for Children) and latterly as head of policy and communications for Treehouse, the autism education charity.
Amanda joined the Council for Disabled Children in 2009 and became strategic director in 2023.
Dr Sue Soan, senior lecturer, Canterbury Christ Church University
Sue has worked on a number of DfE projects and has published regularly on additional educational needs and joint professional working at the local, national and international level.
Prior to joining the university in 2003, she taught in nursery settings, primary and secondary mainstream and special schools for over 25 years.
Marcus Le Brocq, principal consultant, CACI
Marcus leads the end-to-end sales process, from first contact to system go live, for enterprise software systems that improve the delivery and management of services across the public sector, including in the education and youth justice fields.
He has a Masters of Teaching degree and a practitioner background in children’s services.
Do we need a system that makes it clearer what parents should expect?
Amanda: Yes, we do. At the moment we have a postcode lottery in terms of the expectations. We need a set of national standards that sets out clearly what you can expect in terms of what level of support you should be able to expect, particularly at SEND support level, so that it’s clear to parents whether they might need additional support over and above that. That clarity just isn’t there at the moment.
In terms of how we calibrate the system around that…if we’re going to have a set of national standards and expect schools to meet them, then we have to celebrate it when they do. We must have an Ofsted framework that recognises when you are supporting children with SEND effectively.
The other thing in terms of recalibrating the system, is really thinking about health support. Lots of parents, think the route to specialist health support is through an education, health and care plan – and, in fact, sometimes that’s what they get told by clinicians. That shouldn’t be the situation at all. If we had effective community health services properly integrated with schools parents wouldn’t have to ask [for services] because they would already have it.
Around one in five schoolchildren are now assessed as having an additional need. Is it feasible to recalibrate the system with demand so high?
Amanda: We know from the parents that we work with that sometimes the process of monitoring and auditing whether or not their child is getting what they’re supposed to get within an EHCP is arduous. We know that at the moment, it hasn’t led to the improved outcomes that were originally envisaged.
It’s about how do you get support to people at the earliest point of presentation. Also we have developed a system where there is this othering of children – I have to say that there is something wrong with my child, for my child to get the support that they need. So it doesn’t surprise me that we have a crisis in children and young people’s mental health because we’re all the while telling them that there is something wrong with them.
So how do we have a system where actually my needs, my abilities, are just different, and the curriculum responds to that and enables that, and my teachers are supported to be able to understand that there will always be some children where you know the level of complexity is such that you will need a specific plan in place. Let’s make it easier for families and children and young people, and let’s make them all feel supported and held and not like it has to be a battle.
Do we need a different system for mediation, one that reduces the need for tribunals or voids them all together?
Sue Soan: We do need a tribunal system because there will always be cases where that will be essential. But I think that mediation needs to start being thought about right at the beginning of a case where a young person might need additional support, and that then starts with the SENCO and teachers in the school talking to parents, gaining their views and understanding, supporting them, and being very clear about what they think the young person needs but also listening to the parents very carefully. If that school cannot actually support the young person sufficiently, then it’s at this stage that the local authority need to have a discussion with the parents and the school. It is time consuming, but I think if they can talk at that stage with people who can professionally understand what a young person needs, then I think situations and support can be well managed. It’s only where parents, schools and local authorities cannot agree that it [should] go through to mediation. It needs far more emphasis being put on the early discussions, so that everybody understands, including the young person, depending on their age and ability, what is required for that young person to make the most progress.
The number of EHCPs issued has risen exponentially in the last five years resulting in a cliff edge in support provision. How do we solve that?
Sue: EHCPs are a way of parents – and perhaps schools as well – saying that the school has not got the resources, expertise and knowledge or the mental health professionals or counsellors to support the child well enough in that environment. The only way the parents, as that young person’s advocate, can fight for more and better outcomes for them is to get an EHCP.
What’s wrong is that our education system is not meeting the rising needs of young people. They have differences in the way they want to learn, need to learn, and where they learn. For some, the environment of 1,000 children drives their sensory systems into overload. They don’t want to be in that large environment. I think we should think about what type of flexibility in our school system do they need, whilst also understanding that we must ensure that they get the physical, emotional and sensory development, and also the interpersonal skills as they grow. What can we do differently with the pot of money that we’ve got that will enable that to take place, hopefully at the same time decreasing that need for difference being identified by this system.
Could one solution to the EHCP ‘cliff edge’ be to create a gradient system of support?
Marcus Le Brocq: This threshold or cliff edge needs to be more graded allowing for individuality in children’s circumstances, in terms of their needs. Part of the problem is that there isn’t any standardization across England. Every council will do something slightly different, and the EHCPs can vary wildly in length, from a few pages to 50 pages, so there isn’t standardisation to the format. The government has said that by 2025 they’re aiming to standardize the format but it’s tricky to roll out. For example, a family moving from one council to another might mean they are more likely to get an EHCP than they did in the previous one. Meanwhile, an educational psychologist might work across two councils, meaning they have to do a completely different EHCP from one council to the other. Standardising it would make it a lot fairer to access, but it does also need to be in a way that has this graded approach. Schools are most equipped to deal with this, but they need a bit of extra help.
Can we create the change needed without putting in extra money?
Marcus: I don’t think throwing more money at it will fix the problem. The important thing is to create more efficiencies. Take SEND transport which councils spend many millions on. That’s partly because it’s inefficient: they’ll be paying private cabs to drop a child to their school with a chaperone. Whereas, if they had a clever routing system mapped to their software system that economised the routes and picked up three or four children it could save millions of pounds. That can all be done with having a clever case management software system as part of a fully digitised portal with multi agency access.
However, local authorities have multiple software systems that don’t talk to each other. They might have one system for SEND, one system for admissions, one system for social care, and none of these will talk to each other. So there could be efficiencies by having one system that does your virtual school, education, case management, admissions, SEND, all in one place, and that could also save money and and provide a holisitic view of the child in one record. I think it’s partly streamlining systems, looking at practice changes, working out how to best use your technology to help you, rather than be a hindrance because what I often see with the councils I work with is that the technology they’ve got isn’t working for them, so they will have to do inefficient and unsecure workarounds.
