SEND pupils face exclusion risk as schools return, commissioner warns
Fiona Simpson
Wednesday, September 2, 2020
Children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) could be at greater risk of being excluded from school unless they receive additional support upon their return, the children’s commissioner for England has said.
As pupils across England begin to return to schools following almost six months of closures due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Anne Longfield has warned of risks facing those with SEND and in receipt of education health and care plans (EHCPs).
Despite some children with SEND and EHCPs being able to attend school during lockdown, just 18,000 were attending at the end of April, she said, highlighting that legislative changes via the Coronavirus Act also removed access to support services for some families.
“This was often because schools had to conduct ‘risk assessments’ before children could go in and many of these either did not happen or stated that the child would be safer at home. Some families also found that their usual access to special educational support and health services set out in their EHCP disappeared as the Coronavirus Act reduced this to a requirement on local agencies to make 'reasonable endeavours' to deliver these services,” Longfield said.
According to a survey by the Disabled Children’s Partnership, a third of parents (32 per cent) said their school had offered no specific home learning support in relation to their child’s SEN needs.
Further concerns have been raised over the impact of the widening of the attainment gap for the first time in more than a decade on children with SEND.
The transition back to school, coupled with a lack of support services during lockdown may lead to a spike in children with SEND being excluded or being forced to be educated at home, Longfield warned.
“There will be a group of children who might not be able to face going back at all and schools will need to reach out to those families and provide a lot of help and support to prevent those children falling through the gaps in education altogether and ending up being educated at home when that wasn’t really what the child or their family wanted.
“For others, they may struggle in the classroom, start acting up and risk being excluded if their needs aren’t met,” she said.
Strict government guidance on behaviour as schools return could lead to settings taking a “zero tolerance approach” to poor behaviour, she added, calling on the Department for Education to monitor off-rolling and exclusion figures “closely” over the coming academic year.
“Before the crisis, children with SEND had higher rates of exclusion than other children," Longfield said.
"There are concerns that these rates could spike during the autumn term, especially as guidance for schools states 'schools should set out clearly at the earliest opportunity the consequences for poor behaviour and deliberately breaking the rules and how they will enforce those rules including any sanctions', which may lead to more schools adopting a zero-tolerance approach to behaviour problems.
“SEND pupils risk being disproportionately affected by this.”
The warning comes as a new study from the University of Sussex recommended a phased return to school for pupils with SEND.
The recommendations, based on interviews with parents and carers, also include one-to-one support, small group work and visual supports to help children to transition back to full-time education as well as incorporating home learning preferences established over lockdown to allow them to be continued in the classroom.
“Parents and carers in the study have suggested schools use technology to further engage families into the school day or to conduct virtual tours walking pupils through all the changes related to the learning environment. Parents also told researchers that the use of a checklist would help ease anxieties for returning children by providing clarity around changes such as social distancing rules,” the report states.
Meanwhile, a group of organisations supporting children with SEND have released a guide for teachers about how to teach relationships and sex education (RSE) in an accessible way as the subject becomes compulsory.
The guide, created by the Sex Education Forum, together with Image in Action and Mencap, recommends specific practical considerations for schools, such as planning to revisit topics, involving the wide range of staff who may be involved in the teaching and care of pupils and using informal opportunities, for example queuing for lunch could be a chance to reinforce learning about personal boundaries.
Research by the forum found that three-quarters of teachers said that practical advice on how to deliver RSE to students with SEND would be “very helpful”.
