Written evidence from Mrs Victoria Watson (SEN 77)
Education Committee
Solving the SEND Crisis
I am the mother of a 6 year old child with SEN, who attends a mainstream school with an Educational Health care plan. I am sending you evidence today, based on my own personal experiences and the future that I would like to see for my son and all of our young people with SEND.
I strongly believe that more money should be given to school who can prove successful tailored outcomes for children with SEND. This would encourage the schools to use the funding directly for the children who need it and make sure that the right services and provisions are provided for our children. Without additional funding for school to be able to access the right services and support that SEND children need, it doesn’t matter how much training you give the teachers or school staff. However I do believe that all teachers should be required to learn about and use a variety of different teaching methods, getting advice and support from qualified professional on a regular or on going basis. Having regular training on supporting people with additional needs would enable them to provide more and better support for your young people. Challenges should be made against schools or staff within them, who do not accommodate or support young people with SEND in the same way they would if they weren’t supportive or advocating for young people with other protected characteristics. We need the same approach with SEND, advocacy, acceptance, understanding, support, people to challenge and speak out for their rights and equity.
We should be supporting the role and capacity of all schools that support out SEND children and recognising that mainstream isn’t a suitable environment for all our young people, especially in its current state. The demand / requirement for these types of school places will only easy once more school places are made available in specialist schools, independent schools and Alternative Provision and better SEND support is provided within Mainstream schools. The best performing SEND schools and provisions, in terms of outcomes and mental health and well being of our young people, should be given additional funding to help them expand and support other schools or to open new ones.
EHCPs need to place the focus on the needs of the children and not the budgets of the local authority. Waiting times, successful applications, support for parents, carers and children, could be improved in there was less emphasis on the council trying to delay them as long as possible, in order to save money. I do wonder if having a central service within the government, similar to passports or DVLA, would be more efficient? Less money needs to be wasted on things like unnecessary legal fees for the local authorities, on the 96% of EHCP tribunal cases that they loose or the money they spend coming up with new strategies, but not actually changing the outcomes for our young people and more allocated to actually helping our young people. People within the local authority need to be held account for ignoring and disregarding the legislation that leads to unnecessary suffering for our young people. There needs to be accountability for successful outcomes, rather than local authorities being allowed to do whatever they want, often acting outside of the legal requirements, without sanction or regard for the impacts on young people they are impacting. Could be reduce the demand for EHCPs if all schools had direct funding to be able to provide many of the services required by our SEND children? My son was denied additional support at his mainstream school, despite previously receiving it at nursery and a large amount of evidence that it was required, gathered over several years, because the school said, if they provided it without the EHCP, the local authority would use that as a reason to not issue one. Having educational psychologist employed by the local authority also leads to bias and them not being impartial. This has a direct effect on the quality of EHCPs and is also something that should be addressed to improve the outcomes for our young people. To start with, we just need as a minimum to make sure that legislation is complied with so that less of our young people are traumatised and have the opportunity to the education that they are entitled to. We need more support for parents and carers and tighter controls on the actions of the local authorities.
There seems to be no accountability or consequences by Ofstead, Area SEND inspections, or anyone else on SEND. No one seems to take the ultimate responsibility for the impact on our children and even if they were to, there are no consequences to make sure it doesn’t happen again, no sanctions, no improvements to outcomes. The only thing that people seem to be motivated by is money, it certainly cant be outcomes or impacts on young people, so until these things are linked, I don’t see how there can be an improvement to the outcomes or impacts on young people. Who is publishing the facts and figures around the impacts and outcomes of SEND young people and who is making sure that there are targeted improvements in these areas? No one. We need less strategies, targets, frameworks and codes of practises and more enforceable legislation, more consequences to inaction and more reward and opportunities for people to be supported to get it right.
January 2025