Ministers have been criticised for showing a lack of “urgency” on marginalised and vulnerable children by a headteachers’ leader during a debate on improving outcomes for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, described a presentation on SEND reforms by a Department for Education adviser as a “smorgasbord of good intentions” but he called for more ambition from senior figures within government.
He was speaking at a panel discussion at the Tes SEND Show in London today after the DfE’s professional SEND adviser André Imich gave a presentation outlining the department’s reforms.
Mr Barton said: “What we heard from André was a smorgasbord of good intentions all of which we would agree with, absolutely - but where is the urgency?
“One of the things that frustrates me as someone who spends time talking to ministers and the secretary of state is that we hear our civil servants, hardworking, putting together the analysis of what the problems are.
“But what we don’t hear is a secretary of state, a schools minister, a prime minister having as a starting point: What are we doing for the most marginalised, and sometimes most vulnerable, young people?”
Referencing political announcements of recent weeks and past years, Mr Barton added: “Instead, we get mobile phone bans and we get tinkering with the length of our school day or we get an obsession about maths for kids who are post-16.
“As Barack Obama said, it is not the size of the problems, it is the smallness of our politics. Where is the ambition?”
Inconsistent SEND system
In his speech, Dr Imich highlighted the government’s SEND and Alternative Provision Improvement Plan, published earlier this year, following the government’s SEND Review and Green Paper and he also gave an overview of the system.
Dr Imich said: “Outcomes are consistently worse and experiences of navigating the system are poor.” He added that was mostly from a family’s point of view but that navigating the system can be challenging for schools as well.
He said: “There is too much inconsistency across the country, you look at any local authority, you look at the numbers of children in school identified as receiving SEN support, there is usually a massive range...the same is true on the distribution of children with education, health and care plans.”
He also said that the SEND system is not delivering value for money. He added: “There has been a huge increase in funding over the last 10 years, we have now got over £10 billion on the high needs budget. That is an enormous increase for a public service but it is not delivering good outcomes - we saw that in yesterday’s [Education Policy Institute] report.”
‘If we rush, we’ll get it wrong’
Responding to the call for urgency, Dr Imich said: “One of the things you know about SEND if you have been in it for longer than five minutes is that if you do something at one end, then it will have an effect somewhere else.
“It is not always possible to predict where that will be. We need to make sure what we do actually works and we need to get it right.”
He said 32 councils across the country were now working on a change programme, with schools testing out some of the proposals in the SEND improvement plan.
“We know that if we rush into anything, we may well get it wrong. There is a degree of urgency but there is an even more important need to get it right,” he added.
This was challenged by a member of the audience at the Tes SEND Show who said the government has had nine years to implement its reforms.
Addressing this, panel member Taneisha Pascoe-Matthews, an assistant headteacher with responsibility for SEND, said: “When I came here today, I was thinking about the [DfE SEND Review] slogan: ‘Right support, right place, right time’ and I think it actually needs to be ‘right now, right now, right now’.”
SEND reform
A DfE spokesperson said: “We are balancing the need to work at pace with testing out new approaches to make sure they work so that we deliver our ambitious reforms to the SEND and alternative provision system in the right way.
“Our £70 million change programme is up and running, helping to refine the reforms set out in our improvement plan and make sure all children with SEND receive the support they need.
“As well as this, our investment in the high need budget is rising to £10.5 billion in 2024-25 - an increase of 60 per cent compared with 2019-20.”
The DfE is testing its SEND reforms in nine Change Programme Partnerships, each made up of a geographical cluster of three or four local areas, with local authorities and partners - including health services, schools and families.
