Today's guest post, from father of two deaf sons, Matt Keer, may shock you. It may, as it did to me, bring you to the edge of angry tears. It's like the plot of a Kafka novel, surreal and senseless. But this is not fiction. These are the very real reasons behind the fight parents are still facing as they try to get the right SEND support for their children.
Matt Keer did his research after he was told something very troubling about why culture change in some local authorities, as envisaged by the Children and Families' Act really does seem like a fairy tale. Read on to find out more and leave your comments below the blog post itself (not just on Facebook) so Matt, and everyone else, can read them.
****
“A change in the law isn’t enough. It must go hand in hand with a change in culture to make a real difference.”
Edward Timpson, addressing the Local Government Association SEN Conference, December 2013
I’m a parent of two deaf boys. They’re brighter than I am. They’re more determined than I am. They work harder every single day than I work in a calendar month. They are the dictionary definition of the “strivers” that all political parties say they stand up for.
But like many children with special needs or disabilities, thus far they’ve had just a fraction of the life chances that I did. Not because of the SEND – at least, not directly. They’re fortunate enough to have a straightforward diagnosis of need, in a field where talented professionals can and do make a difference – when the professionals are allowed to.
What’s held my boys back boils down to something very simple. Until recently, they haven’t had all the support they needed, in the quantity and quality they needed it, at the time they needed it most. And this has happened for one reason, and one reason only: the local authorities legally responsible for meeting their needs have fought us every step of the way. Not because of austerity – our bitterest battles have been fought when resources were plentiful – but because the local authorities we’ve lived in have all had dysfunctional organisational cultures.
The boys are now at a wonderful, life changing special school for the deaf. Like many parents, we went to Tribunal to secure their provision. It was a bruising struggle against LA SEN officers who clearly had a lot invested in winning. I couldn’t for the life of me tell why at the time. It’s just their day job, right?
But one of the most arresting moments I remember from that day was the walk back from the tribunal building to the station. I was chatting to an education professional who had worked for this LA before, and who attended the hearing. She said something that completely stopped me in my tracks:
“You do realise that if you win this case and get your special school, those LA staff won’t meet their targets, and so won’t be getting a bonus?”
I didn’t believe her. I knew that this LA SEN team had a rotten culture – not just from my own experience, but from talking to local parents, local charities and a few maverick professionals from within their tent. But no-one would be that base, would they?
Local Authority Culture: Follow The Money, Follow The Targets & Objectives
Fast forward a year or two. I followed the progress of the Children & Families Bill with interest. But when Edward Timpson started talking about the need for culture change in LAs, I kept thinking about that conversation about bonuses after our Tribunal. If staff in LA SEN teams are given targets by their managers to achieve objectives that clash with meeting the needs of the individual child - objectives that are fundamentally incompatible with the principles of the new legislation - then how is this culture change going to happen?
So, once the Children & Families Act became law in September, I started researching SEN teams in 20 local authorities in England. I hoovered up data on LA business plans, staff objectives, budgets, and placement policies. And you know what? It turns out that the education professional I talked to after our Tribunal was on the money.
Staff in at least 8 of the 20 LA SEN teams that I researched – that’s 40% of these LAs – work to explicit objectives and targets that at best, clash with meeting the needs of the individual child. At worst, some of these objectives appear to be borderline unlawful.
What sort of objectives and targets am I talking about? Stuff like this:
- Targets that limit the LA’s use of statements and / or EHCPs – These aren’t always explicit, but they exist – usually by setting a team target to arrange more SEN provision through non-statutory means. And a target to limit the supply of statements and EHCPs will usually also act as a brake on spending resources on specialist SEN provision – because a child normally needs a statement or EHCP to secure a specialist school place. Which brings us on to…
- Targets to cap or lower LA expenditure on special school placements – This was the most common explicit objective of concern. In some LAs, these targets are explicitly given to individual staff members; in others, teams are incentivised to place more children with statements or EHCPs in mainstream settings.
- Targets limiting LA spending on out-of-county or residential school placements – These objectives, again, were mostly at individual SEN team staff member level, but were very common.
- Ensuring that LA expenditure on high-needs SEN placements meets declared budget targets – Each year, every LA submits a Section 251 declaration to the DfE, showing its intended expenditure on schools - including expenditure on SEN.
In theory, this isn’t a target of concern – provided that the Section 251 declaration is a realistic estimate of the finances that the LA actually needs to meet its legal obligations to children with SEN. In practice though, these estimates are rarely realistic. One LA that I used to live in has a rapidly growing pre-school and primary age population, and an unusually high percentage of children with complex SEN. This LA has slashed its Section 251 declaration for high-needs SEN spending by £1m this year. It cannot meet its legal obligations with this budget, and it almost certainly knows it.
These are targets that incentivise LA SEN teams and staff members to play down, minimise or even deny a child’s actual special educational needs. A large number of LAs use these targets explicitly – and from the experience of parents, it is very likely that an even larger number of LAs operate on the same principles, just less explicitly. Three of the 20 LAs I looked at refused to provide the data I asked for.
Who is affected by these targets?
The impact on children with SEN and parents is pretty clear. For most of us, getting the provision our children need is an uphill struggle. These targets make it harder.
If you think your child needs an assessment for an EHCP - and if you live in an LA that incentivises its SEN staff to limit the amount of provision it arranges via EHCPs - it’s going to be even more of an uphill battle. If your child is struggling in mainstream and needs a special school placement – and if you’re in an LA that gives its SEN staff specific targets to limit special school expenditure – then it’s going to be even more of an uphill battle.
If your child has a particular type of special educational need that can’t be met in schools in your LA, they’ll probably need an out-of-county placement. If your LA gives its SEN teams objectives to clamp down on out-of-county spending, then it’s going to be even more of an uphill battle to secure this provision.
Some of these targets also affect schools as well. Some LAs are clamping down on the number of statements and EHCPs. As well as making it much hard to access specialist SEN provision, this also relieves LAs of some of the direct financial burden of meeting their legal obligations to children with SEN in mainstream. That places this burden much more squarely on individual mainstream schools, whose budgets are coming under acute strain, and who often struggle to meet the child's needs from their own resources. It's placing unsustainable pressure on the ability and willingness of many mainstream schools to be genuinely inclusive places.
Spare a tear as well – if you can – for LA SEN staff. Those working at the front line in SEN assessment teams are unlikely to have any choice in the targets and objectives that their management give them. And there’s no doubt about it, times are financially tough, and their senior managers can and do play hardball. A lot of parents I’m in touch with can’t get their heads around how personal some of their confrontations with LA SEN staff become.
Remember the bonus that the education professional said our LA SEN staff would lose if we won our Tribunal case? Those days are almost certainly gone. These days, I suspect that LA SEN staff need to meet these targets simply to keep their jobs. If things are getting more personal, it’s probably because LA staff now have a lot more at stake than some extra holiday spending money. It’s their rent, mortgages, and careers that are probably on the line now.
What does this all tell us?
I don’t expect this news will come as much of a shock to those of us who have been in and around the SEN front-line for a while. But there’s still an important message here.
The data I’ve collected is live, not historical. It has all been acquired recently, many months after the 2014 Children & Families Act came into being. Things were supposed to change. They haven’t.
I don’t know whether LAs have told Edward Timpson that they are willing and able to meet his challenge to change their culture. What I do know is that for many of the LAs I’ve looked at, there’s no sign of this change coming – and it won’t come at all, if LAs continue to use targets like these.
The Department for Education is developing a new SEN accountability framework. It needs to look at issues like this. And it needs to do so very, very soon.
Matt specialises in SEND stats, data analysis, and in-depth investigations of policies. He has given evidence to several Parliamentary Select Committee inquiries, and his articles for SNJ on SEND funding, local government policy, and the SENDIST Tribunal have been quoted in Select Committee inquiry reports and national media.
- SEND Transport costs driven by ‘increased parental expectations’ claims councils’ group, and “something has to give”. Disabled children’s safety, perhaps? - November 20, 2023
- So SEND is “lose, lose, lose”? Not for these private sector winners in the DfE’s SEND Change Programme - November 10, 2023
- Miracles and magic: Delivering Better Value in SEND. But better value for whom? - September 8, 2023
wondered why the professionals working with our daughter, though seemingly supportive, have always massively downplayed our daughter’s needs, and steered us away from diagnosis. They also breezily told the school they didn’t need any extra help and wouldn’t get any additional funding. This despite the fact my daughter (gdd and spd amongst other things) can’t run, can’t jump, falls over, has speech and cognitive delay (she is 4 but speech and cognition at 24 – 36 months, bottom 1st centile), struggles with toileting, can’t dress herself, has difficulties with social interactions…………………
Dear Becky
I cannot help replying to YOUR reaction with regard to the situation with these 2 boys. The reason is that you mentioned GDD – Global Developmental Delay – in relation to your daughter’s health.
We have a now 17 year old daughter (has and has always had special education) who was also ‘diagnosed’ with ‘GDD’ (I have always considered this as a ‘rest group’ because it does not completely fit any other condition).
I cannot remember anyone ever describing their child’s health TOTALLY matching that of my daughter’s at that age, and I just wonder if you would not mind telling me more.
I am normally the one seeking for help, and I would not mind doing it the other way round for a change!
thanks for that! We’ve only just started exploring further diagnosis (I wasn’t ready until recently) and she had some genetic blood tests just over a week ago, so her diagnosis as gdd may change. Or it may stay the same! How’s it been for you?
Where to start Becky! How to fit in 17 years in one book! As I said, the term ‘GDD’ set off the alarm bells. I just remember how we have struggled with all the ‘vagueness’ surrounding my daughter’s birth, which was an extremely painful and confusing one, especially for my wife (of course, can you tell a male is talking…).
For your information, she had a brain haemorrhage 6 months after (of which she has more or less recovered btw), which I always blamed the difficulties surrounding my daughter’s birth for. The locum consultant at the time, a Mr Azaday, claimed for example that my wife was going to have twins…. Unfortunately, the second rapid heart beat he picked up was my wife’s….
I’m off again Becky, I do apologise! I just hope for you that one and another will soon become clearer. Do not hesitate to ask me any other questions, I, WE, might well be able to answer your questions from a parent’s perspective. All the best.
What a sad sad state we are all in with this, I am just beginning this process and this does not give me any confidence in getting what my son deserves, what he is entitled to, an Education that meets his needs!!
Hi Susan – don’t lose heart. Once you know what the law says, then the odds of your son getting the support he deserves and needs are very high. It probably won’t happen quickly, and it might not happen without a fight, but you’ll get there!
Many thanks Matt, I had some good news last night, the LA are going into school to do a full audit on the provisions provided for my son in school.. So another step forward!
Don’t give up hope yet Susan; parent power can win the day!!
Well Steph, I think parent power is winning the day!! The LA are now going into school to do an independent audit on provisions for my son!!
This has been going on, like Matt says, since long before ‘austerity measures’ became the buzz word to excuse any service failure or lack of provision. Matt’s work to support this with evidence surely must now be taken seriously by the DfE? But then again, have any of the reforms been implemented on the back of any real research or evidence??? Not that I’m aware of.
I know Wigan Council, my LA, had an objective of reducing statements years ago, but the data from this LA is very hard to obtain, so I’d be interested to know if Wigan are one of the 20 LAs in Matt’s research.
Another personal experience, which can’t be proved but there can be no other explanation, is my LA’s obvious ‘win at all costs’ attitude towards any challenge I bring. It’s personal, I know that, and I’m sure there are many other parents who experience this too. Maybe it is because they need to meet objectives, but how much is down to LAs never wanting to expose their incompetence or negative culture in the first place?
Thanks Matt for providing some evidence based information on a culture that just doesn’t, and shouldn’t go hand in hand with some of our most vulnerable children. It’s scandalous that LAs should get away with this, but ultimately the change in this culture will never occur from the bottom up, and I don’t think the top down approach will ever work either, because the people at the top are oblivious to real life and fail to see our children as equal in value.
Great post Matt, thanks to Special Needs Jungle for the platform.
I should be shocked; but I’m not! I’ve been in the field of SEND for almost two decades. Firstly as an SEND ‘professional’ (advising parents of children with SEND (PPS/IPSEA/Talking SENse!)) and more recently as a parent of children with SEND. As a parent I can relate to much of what Matt has written with the exception of the target culture (although I have for many years had my suspicions). We have been battling our LA for years and even with significant evidence that our preferred independent special school was more suitable and cost effective than the LAs preferred maintained school, we still had to appeal to tribunal, and they still argued on costs. Total madness! This is a scandal and should be ‘outed’, investigated and put right. I’d be interested to read the questions/requests for information which Matt submitted upon the LAs involved – maybe I could do the same with my LA too see if there’s any comparison.
Hi Ken – you can get in touch via the gmail address above…
Great article but I wonder what prevents you naming and shaming the particular authorities using these incentives/ disincentives? Wouldn’t it empower parents to know specifically what they are up against in each area?
Hi all – thanks for reading, and for taking the time to reply!
Before publishing, Tania and I talked about whether to name and shame the 8 LAs in this article. In the end, we decided not to. There’s a simple reason behind this; I’ve got some other investigations running right now into LA SEN practice, including investigations into the 8 LAs mentioned above. If I name and shame them now, it’ll make these investigations much harder to complete.
On the other hand, Up On Downs is exactly right – parents have a right to know what these organisations are doing, and it would empower parents to know specifically what they are up against.
So if you’d like to know whether I looked into your LA’s targets, please feel free to send me an email at this address – send4backup@gmail.com – and I’ll share what I’ve collected on your LA. Also, I’m planning to look into a wider range of English LAs, so I’m happy to take requests, or any other tip-offs…
What’s the best way to find out what targets they’re working to in our local areas? FOI request? If so, any suggestions as to how to word the question/s?
Hi Pish – see response to Jane above…
Wow, spot on, well done to Matt for putting in the hours on the research. Our family have faced very similar challenges over the past 14 years – my 16yo son attends the same residential deaf school – and I feel certain our LA is one of the 20 – indeed, we are just in the middle of transition to sixth form, and the EHCP process is if anything less transparent than the SEN process we endured through two tribunal appeals (one to force the LA to issue a SEN, and one for primary school placement). In contrast to the optimism of many in the field with more specialist knowledge than me, I was never convinced that the C&F Act would bring about any positive change – it’s always been about the money (and, if you’re an LA, spending as little of it as possible on each child). But the culture among MPs is that they make a difference by passing new laws (if only some more of them had held proper jobs before becoming MPs, they would know how silly this is). So they pass a new law, collect their gong, and move on. This research deserves a wide audience, including ministers and their shadows. Happy to help any way I can.
Cheers Richard – might be good to meet up soon?
You’ve probably seen that the DfE are working up a new accountability framework for LA SEN services – https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/send-supporting-local-and-national-accountability – they’re running behind schedule, and there are flaws in the approach they are taking (might blog on this soon). What this framework desperately needs is a way of feeding in the experience of users (children, parents) and front-line staff. If you (or others!) can think of a way of doing this, that would be great.
Would you be willing to script a template letter that parents can send to LA and make a FOI request? Would be good to create a national picture. These practices may be considered as blanket policies and could be challenged en masse .
Hi Jane – yes! – Get in touch via the gmail address I’ve put in the comments, and I can give you something that can be easily adapted locally.
You really, really should name these LAs and stop conflating these totally different targets . Personally the only target I know of is to somehow keep within the guidance and the budget if at all possible. The same rules that apply to any council department. Under-staffed SEN depts are really doing their best with a new and very complex system that rightly raises expectations without providing the funding to match them. The sooner we all stop blaming front line case managers and completely over stressed departmental managers and start blaming the politicians that too many of us voted for the better.
Hi Terry, sorry it’s taken me a while to respond to you. Are you an LA employee working in the SEN field? I’ve not met many in my time with a passion for specified and quantified detail, so apologies if I’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick.
Hopefully the comment I left yesterday will explain why I’m not naming and shaming these LAs just yet. There’s a few of us doing research right now into other aspects of LA practice, and we don’t want to affect this research. And from what many parents tell me, some of the LAs we’re looking at are completely immune to the concept of shame anyway.
I certainly wouldn’t want to blame front line SEN assessment service staff – with luck, the final paragraph of the article will have made that clear. I have to say though that my sympathy evaporates exponentially the further up you go the LA food chain. An incredibly high proportion of LA Children’s Services told the DfE last year that they were ready, willing and able to meet the challenge of the new system. Clearly, many of these LA seniors were wrong to do so.
Why did they do it? Who told them everything was going to be fine? Why are so many LAs cutting their high-needs SEN budget, whilst simultaneously protecting or increasing their school improvement budget?
Ideally, what we’d do – parents, schools, and LA SEN staff across the land – is to put our weapons down, work together, and breach Whitehall’s ivory tower. Make it clear that things in the world of SEN provision are unsustainable, that they have been for many, many years, and that things cannot continue this way. Co-production between parents and local authorities on an epic, national scale. Or we just carry on as we have been for as long as my children have had special educational needs.
If you’re interested in seeing some of the data, send me an email on send4backup@gmail.com – you may find that some of the practice I’ve highlighted is a lot closer to home than you think.
Matt, you write that you “hoovered up data”. Is it possible that Freedom of Information requests might more precisely generate the data? Does anyone know?
Hi Norman, sorry it’s taken me a while to respond. I got the data from a variety of different sources, and FOI requests were one of the tools I relied on. There are reasons why FOI is hard to apply to this problem though. Feel free to email me at send4backup@gmail.com , and I can explain why.
If this is the case then the sooner a Council is made to face a Legal Case to account for this the better. I can certainly believe every assertion made in this article as it could explain why at every turn there has been misinformation, delay for every possible reason and timescales that totally disregard any published workflow. Frankly I have no problem believing this, because it would be impossible for anyone to make the system so dysfunctional without it.
This is not surprising and the fact that they cannot change the culture is something I have said all along. In certain cases they cannot change the culture without changing some of the staff, generally senior level staff (managers etc), but targets are an area I hadn’t really considered properly, although it makes a great deal of sense. Everything is about targets these days. Why not SEN, too? It was estimated originally that around 2% of children would need a statement, and that became the first target for many LAs, I suspect – including in their criteria that children had to be in the bottom 2% academically in order to qualify for a statement (not mentioned in the statutes, mind you, but an interpretation of discussions around the legislation designed to limit provision right from the start). In order to properly fulfil their obligations, though, SEN departments need a different form of funding from other departments. It should be ringfenced and unlimited so that they do not have to keep one eye off the ball of helping SEN children because they are too busy keeping the budget plate spinning with their other hand!
This doesn’t surprise me. When I fought for my sons statement his SENCO refused to apply for an assessment. I later found out that not only did she sit on the SEN panel in the LA (conflict of interest?) but that the authority appeared to have to llimit the number of statements. Our first application was refused on dubious grounds but we applied again and got an assessment and then a statement. My son then got a place in an out of borough ASD school. We were lucky. I’ve recently read an LA document that said it was ending out of borough placements because of the costs involved. Consequently it wants local schools to take on more of these children (particularly ASD etc) but as I discovered with my daughter there weren’t enough places or the specialism to teach her. As it was she was too poorly to go back into school (lack of CAMHS input worsened situation) and I was coerced into home educating her by LA.
i don’t just think the target culture and budgetary restrictions are the only reasons why we’re unlikely to get a culture change. I’ve met individuals with an atrocious attitude to SEN particularly to less obvious difficulties such as ASD and ADHD. Attitudes such as “pushy middle class mums looking for a diagnosis” “we never had these difficulties in my day” abound in my authority and some of the schools. There is also the problem of poorly trained professionals who, frankly, don’t know enough about SEN and disability and when confronted with a parent who does become defensive. Power, ignorance, the target culture and the postcode lottery which has led to some professionals developing a twisted bigotry to those not in deprived neighbourhoods
It’s all sooooo short sighted, frustratingly so. If they spent more money on a) acquiring data and keeping up a database of the real needs of children and then b) making sure there will be suitable provision for these children over the coming years rather than assuming mainstream can handle them all, they would end up saving thousands, nay millions of lawyers fees when they fight these parents because there is no suitable local provision. Of course that’s just one side of it – think of all the money they are saving by not having the correct educational set-ups, when parents are left to feel like they have no choice but to home-educate their children…..
That’s a really good idea, Steph. Do you know if LAs routinely keep an up to date database of the needs of each SEND child and where they are based?
Sadly, it appears they don’t. Not in our county anyway. We have been requesting this for some time and it seems so basic to me, this should have been done all along. Our daughter received a statement 4 years ago aged 4, and around 2 years ago I posed the question to our Head of SEN as to what secondary school in county they feel she will be able to attend. It’s clear to all that mainstream will not be possible, and they don’t deny that, but they also don’t offer any alternative. Simply because there isn’t one. Is that a good enough reason though? There are of course other parents in our position too.
It sounds well worth doing. And this is something that the DfE & Ofsted might be able to lead on, by expanding the LA’s reporting requirements under the annual SEN2 survey – https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/special-educational-needs-survey-2015-guide
Having worked for fifteen years in three different LAs as a senior SEN officer and casework manager until I retired last year I have to say I don’t recognise much of what has been said. Has the data been interpreted within the context of any first hand experience of working within an SEN Team? Most jobs involve working to targets these days, public or private sector. My experience is that targets were generally concerned with meeting statutory deadlines and reducing tribunals, which naturally involves working cooperatively with parents. Other than that they would mainly focus on personal development and training. It would be very hard to successfully deliver targets seeking to reduce the number of assessments agreed or reduce out of authority placements for the most complex pupils. Individual officers would not be in a position to do this anyway as these decisions are generally taken by panels of senior officers, these days from all agencies. SEN Teams do not generally arrange non-statutory provision or any provision come to that. They access provision that is already available. Arranging provision is the responsibility of those charged with strategic work and planning, which can be very hit and miss depending on where you are. I can’t imagine at the moment that many SEN officers would be worried about keeping their jobs given that many LAs are desperately seeking to find more experienced staff, who are very thin on the ground, to implement the reforms. Bear in mind that many teams have doubled or tripled in size during the last year to eighteen months but continue to struggle with the reforms because they are so much more labour intensive if implemented as intended. I heartily agree there is poor management of SEN within some LAs but this often appeared to me to be due to lack of knowledge and experience of this very specialist area rather than any deliberate malicious intent. Unfortunately SEND is not really a priority issue for local or national government and this can lead to people lacking the necessary knowledge being appointed to senior management roles on the basis that any good manager can do the job. Actually they can’t and they don’t usually last long believe me! It should also be remembered that LAs do not use their ‘own’ money to fund SEN. This money is retained from the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) provided by central government that funds all maintained schools except academies and free schools. A small portion of it is top sliced by LAs, some of which is for SEN high needs funding including staffing of SEN teams in many areas. Therefore in reality it is schools’ money that is used to fund all SEN provision whether in maintained mainstream and special schools or alternative independent local provision as well as independent schools. LAs are accountable to local Schools Forums for use of these funds as well as to central government; headteachers can and do give LAs a hard time if they do not agree with how funding is spent. I have rarely if ever seen this salient point taken into account when LAs are criticised. I have to say don’t have any particular loyalty to any LA. I am the parent of a grown up son who has severe learning difficulties and a profound hearing impairment. He was one of the first people to have a statement after the 1981 Act came into force so have been closely personally involved in SEN for a long, long time. My motivation for doing the job, in common with many other officers I came across in the course of my work, was to try to get the best outcome I could for the children on my caseload within the very complex and difficult system that did and still exists. I do hope that this article doesn’t alarm parents too much and undermine the work that many parents and dedicated professionals are doing together to try to achieve the aims of the reforms. If the information obtained has been accurately interpreted then I think it would apply to a minority of LAs only who ought to have been found out and named and shamed well before now.
Hi Auntieh, thanks for taking the time to write this. Some answers to your questions:
Has the data been interpreted within the context of any first hand experience of working within an SEN Team? Yes – I’ve privately shared my findings with a small number of people who have direct, first-hand, current and/or recent experience of working in a SEN team. None of them expressed any surprise, it was consistent with the culture they work in. I’ve also talked to SENCOs who reported that they have struggled to access top-up funding via the High Needs Block.
The information on targets was primarily obtained directly from LAs, who were answering a set of basic questions: “do you use this type of target: Yes or No?” Not a lot of room for misinterpretation in their responses. I have assumed that they answered these questions truthfully.
Is this data representative? I honestly don’t know for sure. I looked at 20 LAs. There are 154 in England, so 13% of all LAs. I suspect that culture, efficiency, and respect for the law will vary hugely from place to place. I would be very surprised though if the 8 LAs that provided evidence of targets of concern were the only 8 in the whole of England that work this way.
Yes, targets are a fact of life in managing private and public sector enterprises. Not all of the targets that LAs described were malign; some LAs had targets to process %ages of EHCP assessments within statutory timescales, others had targets to make efficient use of public expenditure, or targets to refresh Local Offer content. But not all targets are appropriate or desirable, and I firmly believe that the targets described in the article are not.
“Arranging provision is the responsibility of those charged with strategic work and planning” – That’s true, at a planning and commissioning level – but not at the level that parents are most familiar with in statements or EHCPs. A strategic commissioning team will not determine what appears in Part 4 of a child’s statement, or Section I of an EHCP. And a problem that parents seem to run into continually is LAs making decisions about placement that are governed by previous investment decisions rather than individual pupil need.
Funding: The article concentrated on the high-needs SEN domain, mostly because that’s where most of my contact with the system has been. For the 10+ years I’ve been involved in this area, the LA has been the key decision-maker on funding and provision. My experience wouldn’t map across well to the case of a child whose SEND don’t require statutory provision. Yes, schools are responsible for arranging non-statutory provision – although as you know the funding that supports this is formula-based, and does not follow the child. One of the reasons that I wanted to look into the LA target issue was what some SENCOs were saying – that they were finding it increasingly difficult to get the backup they needed from LA sources: requests for statutory assessment approved, or unlocking top-up funding.
Another issue that emerged in the research I did was the way in which some LAs were top-slicing. Most LAs were top-slicing the DSG by a smaller amount in absolute terms compared to last year. Some of the 20 LAs I looked at had chosen to use their top-sliced funding to boost spending on ‘school improvement’ at the expense of high-needs SEN. It reinforces your point about the priority given to SEN by local and national government – and makes me pretty unhappy. I have some experience with ‘school improvement’ and its drivers; none of it has given me any confidence that it is a good investment of scarce resources.
Anyway, hope this helps with background, and thanks again.
Thanks for your reply. I’ve been discussing this with various ex colleagues who are also surprised. It would be interesting to know exactly what questions were asked and what the concerning replies were. Did you ask how many if the targets were met? With regard to SENCOs I’ve worked with many in my time and a recurring problem is that they are often not told by senior school management exactly how much is allocated to their school for SEN. I’ve come across this time and time again. I used to point them to the Section 52 budget as it was which would cause some surprise. It ought to be more simple now that we have base plus top up funding but if course it isn’t because schools say they don’t have sufficient SEN funding to provide the base amount whereas LAs think they should so are reluctant to agree statutory assessment if the magic £6k per pupil doesn’t appear to have been utilised. It’s not easy for anyone at the moment and the reforms weren’t properly thought through or tested sufficiently in my opinion. My concern is the children and young people who will lose out as a result of the current mayhem. Government has given vast sums of money to LAs to implement the reforms but many of them are struggling to do so even with the best of intentions. This is money, £80m plus I think over two years and possibly more to come, that could have gone straight to schools and pupils. To be honest this bothers me more than some iffy targets that very likely in the main are not met anyway.
I have emailed you as I would like to know the questions asked as well to ask my la – 25 children lost all thier statemented provision last year on transfer to ECHP….. they are trying to do it to my child now too 🙁