CYP Now - SEN checks must focus on local progress, not just crude ratings

The disability and special educational needs reforms, with joined-up education, health and care plans at their heart, are finally starting to bite. They make complete sense to me, with a far greater focus on children's strengths rather than their weaknesses, and a requirement that professionals will work together as a team to wrap support around the family.

In fact, they leave me with just one question. Why has it taken so long to introduce them?

The outgoing arrangements, much of which were introduced 33 years ago, were seriously in need of replacement. Drawn out and one-dimensional processes, such as the statement of special educational needs, came out of the 1981 Education Act, coincidently the same year that the London Marathon started - a not entirely dissimilar endurance event that requires both stamina and mental toughness just to get through it.

Of course, there has been some local innovation and improvement in the way the system was working. But it took the 2014 Children and Families Act to really move things on, presumably because it made it acceptable, and legal, for local authorities to abandon processes that were not working as well as they could and to introduce something new.

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