Plans for inspection of provision for deaf children labelled 'unfair'

Under Ofsted proposals, health, education and social care services for children with special educational needs (SEN) and disabilities (SEND) will be inspected jointly across a local area.

Responding to a consultation on the proposals, which closed on Monday, the NDCS said inspection should consider local area provision by type of need.

However NDCS’s response to Ofsted’s consultation, which closed this week, recommended that Ofsted commits to inspecting local provision for each main type of SEND.

“We consider it unfair that parents of children with SEND are not provided with the same detailed information about the quality of their child's education that other parents are,” The NDCS response states.

The charity also raised concerns around the lack of clarity over what the consequences would be if concerns are raised about an area’s provision. It calls on Ofsted to commit to issuing notices to struggling local authorities and re-inspecting them within a year.

Ian Noon, head of policy and research at NDCS, said:? “Whilst this is a positive step forward, we’re concerned that the Ofsted proposals don’t go far enough to make a real impact on the education of deaf children.    

“It is not right that Ofsted is proposing to treat children with special educational needs and disabilities as a single entity. Deaf children have specific educational needs. It is unfair that parents of deaf children are given less information about the quality of education that their child receives.?

“NDCS wants Ofsted to let parents know if provision is outstanding or inadequate by giving graded judgements on provision, otherwise parents of deaf children will continue to be left in the dark on how well their deaf child is being supported.”

An Ofsted spokesman said: “We are delighted that our consultation on special educational needs and disability inspections has attracted more than 2,000 responses. We note that the National Deaf Children's Society welcomes our proposed approach to the inspections, which will begin in May.
 
“Ofsted is now analysing feedback from the society, as well as other groups and people.
 
“We expect that this new way of inspection will act as a catalyst for improvement, so that those with disabilities or special educational needs can benefit from higher quality services.”