Written evidence from Mrs Judy Cooper (SEN 92)
Education Committee
Solving the SEND Crisis
I am a parent of two children with SEND – a 16 year old boy and an 11 year old girl. Both have been diagnosed with autism. In addition my son has some traits of ADHD and my daughter has dyscalculia as well as a language processing disorder. They both have EHCPs.
They both attended a mainstream primary school in our local village on the Surrey/Hampshire border. My son now attends a specialist boy’s school – More House in Frensham and it has transformed his life.
I am in the process of trying to find a secondary school for my daughter and it has been a difficult and traumatic journey and I am deeply worried about the future for her simply due to a lack of school options. Every mainstream school I have spoken to about her needs have agreed she has the exact profile of most of the girls who are among their school refusers and I passionately believe she will not be able to thrive in any of the local mainstream secondary schools.
Consultation responses
Mainstream provision
In my opinion the only way existing needs can be met through mainstream provision is by building an enormous number of new schools – both specialist and mainstream. If I think about what would have helped my two children in mainstream schools by far the biggest issue was class sizes. They simply could not cope with the noise and distraction of 30+ children in a single classroom. Often those classrooms are old, small and cramped and not fit for purpose making the level of sensory overload even greater.
There are few spaces where SEND children can retreat to when they feel overwhelmed – these need to be quiet, calming spaces where there is no judgement that help them recover. Often they only need five minutes or so – perhaps with a therapy animal to help restore their equilibrium.
But for my children by far the most important element of every day is how well they feel understood by teachers and teaching assistants. This is an area that needs a huge level of investment in training and skills. It is usually teaching assistants who spend the most time with SEND children and yet they have minimal training. In primary schools most TA’s are other mothers. Even if those mothers have SEND children of their own this does not necessarily equip them to deal with all types of SEND children at school for a number of reasons – SEND needs play out quite differently in each child with often a combination of needs any one of which may be out of their experience. A broad example is that a mother with a boy with autism will not understand how it displays in girls where masking is often the primary problem. I am a mother of an autistic boy and girl and so I know this firsthand.
Even a mother of an autistic child will not have the skills necessary to help that child thrive at school. I know myself how inadequate I sometimes feel in knowing what will help my child. I have had to resort to paying for the skills of a speech and language therapist, an occupational therapist, an educational therapist and a psychotherapist to help my daughter fulfil even a tenth of her clever and creative potential.
Every school should have these skills (SLT, OT, EP) in-house where the professionals can get to know the children and their histories and help them celebrate their achievements. Having outside people coming in once a week is fine but when dealing with autism this level of contact will never build up the level of trust and familiarity the child needs to really respond to them.
Every teacher and TA needs in-depth training on finding different ways to explain things, how to identify signs of overwhelm and strategies to try to help them.
In secondary schools there is often a higher level of training among SEND teams but they are much smaller and every mainstream school I have visited in Hampshire and Surrey have told me they are completely overwhelmed and unable to meet the level of need that increases each year. The better ones usually have a highly trained and committed head of SEND who has the support of the senior leadership team and board of governors.
Specialist schools
Personally, I think we have an ideological fixation on inclusivity that is not accompanied by the level of investment and training required to make this a reality. To do this properly we need to tailor our education to the different needs of every single person and the different learning profiles of which there are hundreds! I simply do not believe it is possible.
For me the solution is more and a greater variety of specialist schools. We have been incredibly lucky with my son who attends More House School in Frensham, Surrey. This is an independent school and the largest of its kind. I would advocate them as a model for more schools along these lines. Because it is a bigger school, children are more likely to ‘find their tribe’. A problem with a lot of specialist schools is that they are so small that social problems can be exacerbated as the number of friendship possibilities are reduced.
More House is a boys only school but it caters to the level of need both my children fit into which is mild-moderate need. There are very few of these schools in the country let alone local areas. I have looked at over 40 schools to try and find a similar secondary school to suit my daughter and have not found a single school that I thought would really help her thrive and maximise her potential. More House has been trying to open a girls school for over 13 years and have been unable to do so despite the level of need being huge in this area. I’m unsure of the reasons that have prevented this. Another, school which is a good model is Limpsfield Grange in Oxted. It caters specifically for girls with autism (who have quite different needs to boys with autism) but the reports coming to me from professionals is that Surrey County Council have pressured the school to take girls with much higher needs and behavioural challenges than is suitable for the school and as a result it is no longer the ideal option it once was. Specialist schools need to focus on a particular target intake as it is the balance of need and behaviour that is often the difference between students thriving and going off the rails.
I have seen my son thrive and grow in confidence at More House School. Despite attending a nurturing mainstream primary school that is very alive to SEND issues and goes out of its way to meet their needs by Y6 my son was deeply unhappy, isolated and lonely there. He talked about self-harming and still regards Y6 as one of the worst years of his schooling career as he found it more and more difficult to access the curriculum and understand what was being expected of him.
At More House he has become a different person. He is now achieving well academically to the point where he is aiming to get good enough marks to secure a place at an Oxbridge University and is studying Mandarin outside of school at GCSE level. He is more confident within himself and has found a core group of friends who all have different needs but they are similar enough that they have forged strong friendships. I strongly believe if he had attended a mainstream school he would have been at huge risk of clinical anxiety, depression and self-harm.
In my opinion, but this is evidenced on nothing than anecdotal evidence, I think the level of SEND need has increased a huge amount in the past five years. Some of this will be increased awareness but some of this I genuinely believe is the product of a world that is now faster paced, more complex and over stimulating. Possibly diet, genetics and environmental reasons have a role as well. But I do know the school system seems woefully out of date in dealing with an issue that will usually affect at least 10-15% of children in a classroom and yet systems are set up for dealing with just 1-3% of children in a class having such needs.
I do feel there needs to be some proper statistical analysis and research on this issue and realistic future projections and planning undertaken.
As a parent I don’t pretend to have any real expertise to offer on this. I can only talk about my perspective and experience. Compared to many other parents of SEND children I speak to I have had a less traumatic experience than most with Hampshire County Council. However, I suspect that is because after an initial refusal to assess my son for an EHCP I involved an experienced lawyer and undertook to have my children assessed by high quality independent experts. Being unable to find a legal reason to be unreasonable they have been forced to be reasonable.
I have seen nothing in the government proposals to think this situation will improve and the proposal to put VAT on specialist school feels is ridiculous as it will simply force more parents to apply for EHCPs or send children into under-resourced mainstream schools and probably end up school refusing.
In my opinion the ability to tackle many of these issues requires a more systemic approach. The high transport bills that are bankrupting local authorities would not be the case if there were more specialist schools and a greater variety of types of school options in each local area. Would this cost more than the transport bill? I have no idea. However, as a parent who is contemplating sending my daughter to a school a 40 minute drive away I am faced with asking for transport costs or not working full-time as I cannot spend almost three hours of each day simply taking my daughter to school and picking her up. We cannot afford this as a family.
Our education system is largely still based on a Victorian approach and this approach is no longer fit for purpose for a generation of children whose brains seem to be evolving.
What I do know is that faced with the high legal costs of an EHCP fight or being offered a reasonable amount of budget to find a solution that would work for us as a family, we would have been happy to spend that money to ‘top-up’ the council provision. I suspect many middle-class families would feel the same.
As a parent I’m not sure I have much expertise to offer in this respect. However, what I do know is that my daughter might have been able to manage a small, nurturing secondary school with the right specialist support in place. However, every private school we applied to rejected her and said they could not meet her needs. Almost every specialist school we applied to rejected her as not having high enough needs.
I do think the private school system is a resource that could be better used in this regard. A large number of SEND children need smaller class sizes, well-trained teachers and a flexible approach in the curriculum to meeting need. Why so many private schools are now veering away from SEND children I’m not sure. We were happy to pay the school fees rather than have them meet the EHCP so it wasn’t a matter of funding. I do feel this is an area that needs more investigation. With perhaps some state funding many private schools could be supported to become more specialist in nature to meet mild-moderate SEND needs.
January 2025