I was asked a pertinent question at a leadership event recently: “Does the Department for Education’s SEND and Alternative Provision Improvement Plan address the current challenges in the special educational needs and disabilities and AP system?”
The answer is no, not in isolation.
I would argue that a more fundamental rethink is necessary. When a system is in such a crisis and needs so much investment, that rethink needs to encompass all aspects of education.
It’s worth examining what’s happening with the DfE’s £70 million change programme, which the government says is working “over the next two to three years with selected local authorities in nine regions, working alongside families to implement, test and refine longer-term plans”.
SEND change pilot scheme
The pilot scheme involves only 32 (out of 317) local authorities in England and could have done with being promoted more widely. The three key objectives are well defined: to deliver better experiences for families, to improve outcomes for children and young people and to create a financially sustainable system. There is a clear vision for what problems need tackling but not for what this should look like in practice, the vision in a fully functioning system.
The programme is testing reforms, including a new regional partnership structure, a set of tools including a new education, health and care plan (EHCP) template, and revised multi-agency working with NHS integrated care boards. However, most of the heavy lifting for inclusion is through enhancing what is “ordinarily available” in schools.
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It’s not yet clear how improvement will be achieved, beyond sharing expectations with schools and a five-day training programme named Partnerships for Inclusion of Neurodiversity in Schools (Pins). This is welcome but it is not going to be sufficient. Schools require long-term opportunities for strengthening inclusive teaching and leadership. They also need wraparound services to support early intervention.
Each of the pilot areas will engage with the Pins programme, which is funded jointly by the DfE and NHS England, with the aim of shaping whole-school SEND provision, providing early intervention and further upskilling school staff through collaborative working with parents and carers.
The website for North-East Lincolnshire SEND, which covers one participating local authority area, shows that 44 per cent of primary schools applied for this programme and four were selected. This raises questions. Why is the support that’s needed being rolled out in such a parsimonious way? Are we really in a position to “test” at a time when schools are crying out for professional development support?
Then there is the new mandatory National Professional Qualification (NPQ) for SEND coordinators, designed to focus on the strategic role of the Sendco as a leader who can support the upskilling of all staff.
But for every teacher to be a teacher of SEND, every teacher will need training. Change can’t rely simply on the Sendco to do more. Training and development must encompass leadership and teaching at all levels.
Demand for support
We need this in a world where the new normal is to have almost one in five children with an identified need in every mainstream class in England (up to 18.4 per cent in 2024 from 17.3 per cent in 2023). We need to work alongside parents, who are frustrated at the backlog of EHCP assessments, exacerbated by both increased demand and a continuing shortage of qualified educational psychologists.
Increasing the breadth of what is “ordinarily available” without increases in core funding is only possible by stretching everything else. And we all know how that goes. Assumptions about local authorities’ capacity to deliver improvement at scale need to be more realistic.
According to Special Needs Jungle, high-needs funding has dropped by a staggering 41 per cent in the past decade on a per-pupil basis.
It’s no wonder that the latest Pearson School Report shows that 69 per cent of teachers said the current education system is “ineffectively supporting SEND pupils in their aspirations and achievements”.
The change we need now is to make SEND central to every policy area of education: in professional development, curriculum, attendance, behaviour, exams, assessment, Ofsted and everything else. It cannot be an afterthought.
The current requirements of Progress 8 and Ofsted actually disable schools, with incentives to be exclusive rather than inclusive.
The good news is that increasing evidence of effective inclusion emerging happening in our schools but it’s despite the support of the government’s improvement plan, not because of it. Serious change requires the Change Programme to be accompanied by a sector wide review that looks at how inclusion can become a pre requisite for excellence. This means investment in health, social care, and improved accessibility to support services. Then we have a chance to address the systemic failures in the system.
Margaret Mulholland is the special educational needs and inclusion specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders
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