SEN0142

Written evidence submitted by The Henry Beaufort School

I work as a Secondary mainstream school SENDCO, and I also teach. The school I work in has just over 1000 pupils, aged 11 to 16. We currently have 45 EHCP pupils in the school, in 2022 it was 23.

Current and future model of SEND provision

The threshold for EHCPs are different depending on the LA issuing them and this needs to be consistent. The threshold should be high and should not be influenced by how many private reports a parent can afford. It should largely be based on school evidence and supported with educational psychologist assessments done in school.

Local authority case workers lack expertise to make decisions on special school places. The local authority should have a team of SEND education professionals who are able to visit schools and make school based assessments of which young people require specialist school placements. Currently this is not happening and decisions are made on paperwork alone, but there is a problem that parents with more means acquire more private reports which can skew the judgements about which young people are most in need of specialist placements.

Schools get very little support from professionals in health and social care. Often it will be a report that issues recommendations for the school which are unrealistic and not based on good knowledge of what mainstream schools can actually provide. Multi agency working should involve meetings between professionals and parents in schools so these things can be discussed and agreed in person.

School mental health teams need to also have a more proactive role in schools, delivering regular timetabled sessions as well as supporting individual students when needed. They should also be able to provide support and advice for parents on how to support their child’s mental health. They should not be able to refuse to support EHCP students, as they have done, on the basis that these students are already getting help, when often this would be the best kind of support for them. PRUs also have excellent expertise in providing therapeutic support for young people with a high level of SEMH needs, whose needs cannot be met in mainstream school (either as a short term or long term issue). PRUs have a bad reputation with parents (understandably) and often are refused, but if this was managed in a way that highlighted their expertise and provided funding for a more comprehensive offer of support, then there is more scope for how they can support schools with managing the needs of young people with SEMH needs. This would be more cost effective than specialist school placements.

It is very clear that there are unscrupulous operators within the private sector who will issue a diagnosis on what can often be very little evidence. These companies charge in the region of £2000, and parents who have paid this amount will be expecting results, and these companies know this. Once a private report has been issued, parents often contact the school wanting all the recommendations to be implemented, and in addition will often make requests for extra time in exams and/or other access arrangements. They can also apply for DLA. Therefore, seeking a private report is essentially incentivised. Even in CAHMS there are well meaning professionals issuing diagnoses without having full access to evidence about what is impacting on the presenting behaviour and symptoms of a young person; I have heard professionals say that even though there is no evidence of need from the school they will still issue a diagnosis because symptoms can be ‘masked’. In actual fact, masking in an adaptive strategy and should not be used as evidence of a developmental disorder. The evidence emerging about the impact of parental mental health, poor diet, lack of sleep and screen addiction is rarely included in diagnosis reports (I have read hundreds, from many different companies and the quality is hugely variable). It’s clear that a within child problem is often diagnosed when in fact the real problem is systemic and/or environmental. This can lead to labels that are inaccurate and limit the child’s access to appropriate support and care. It is also often the case that evidence from school is either not included or ignored. There needs to be a much tighter control over which companies can issue a diagnosis of a developmental disorder, and evidence from school should always be taken into account. Schools have developed high levels of expertise in recognising signs of SEN need, and the idea that ‘masking’ is a reason that the child has a SEN not evident in school does not stand up to scrutiny.

Improving teacher expertise in delivering high quality inclusive teaching, upskilling LSAs and improving pay and opportunities for career development for LSAs, well funded access to assistive technologies for students who have learning needs; these are all areas which have the potential to make a positive improvement to the SEND offer in mainstream schools. Onsite adaptive provision, including onsite units, requires better funding and support from the LA.
Early intervention, particularly in the area of speech and language, is desperately needed. Parents need to be made aware of how vital early interaction with children is, and how screens are causing significant damage to the speech and language development of children. Parents and early years settings require more support for this.
Better use of assistive technology could improve support for students with cognition and learning needs.
A solid foundation of core skills and knowledge is vital. For those with more complex needs there should not be a pressure to take a full set of 8 or 9 GCSEs. Core should always be a requirement but there should be more flexibility on the type and number of option subjects for SEND pupils. There should be more practical option subjects available. Those with more complex needs should have more time in the day for sensory/wellbeing/resilience building activities.
We have not seen improvements. Off-site alternative provision is extortionately expensive, and because of the cost only a few pupils get funding, and it is not always those that need it most who get it, it is those with parents who can afford the most private reports and lawyers to argue for what they want. It is not a good system for meeting needs as it creates inequality between those that have means and those that do not. Schools require more funding for better on-site adaptive provisions, and more access to LA support for setting this up and implementing it.
Schools should have more access to professionals who can support parents and families to help their child attend school. There should be ‘half way house’ style on site adaptive provision with staff who have expertise in helping children and young people with school based anxiety. Schools should be funded so that they can provide more therapeutic options such as sensory gardens for students with these kind of needs.
Schools are expected to manage the needs of an ever increasingly large amount young people who have extremely complex needs. These young people are often on very long waiting lists and are not getting support from anywhere else. Parents/carers often have mental health needs themselves and some find it difficult to work with schools constructively. This leads to confrontation and distress for all parties involved. Schools cannot be expected to solve complex problems that relate to an interaction of social/emotional/learning and family based needs without a lot more support from outside agencies and better funding. The rapid increase in numbers of SEND pupils in classes where there is not always an additional adult to provide support is putting teachers under a huge amount of strain and pressure and is clearly a significant part of the reason why many are leaving the profession.
NHS should fund nurses to have closer links with early years settings.
More and better access courses
NA

Finance, funding and capacity of SEND provision

Please see previous point on funding required for speech and language support in early years
The current system is leading to extremely high levels of funding going to a very small number of young people. I have attended tribunals where parents have been given either very expensive private SEND school places or an extremely expensive package of LA EOTAS funding, where I felt that needs could be met with a better funded on site adapted provision. Decisions are made on the evidence of professionals (private practitioners) who often have only met the child once, often on TEAMS, rather than on the evidence from school professionals who have known the child for years. This is because the situation has become confrontational between school and parent due to the reasons stated above, and the parent then pays for private reports to challenge the school’s position. If schools were better supported by the LA and better funded for adapted provisions then this could be avoided. At present the service provided by the LA case workers is poor, they lack expertise, many of them are not local and so have no knowledge of the local area, there is a high turn over of staff so lines of communication are often disrupted and information is not passed between stakeholders in an effective or timely way. Certainly, specialist schools are needed for those students who have very complex needs and cannot access mainstream, but currently these places are not issued in a fair way to those who need it most, and usually it is after extremely long and protracted battles which leaves all those involved stressed and disillusioned with the system.
Currently there is no discernible improvements from the ‘Delivering better value in SEND programmes’.
NA
NA
Reform is needed – currently the LA fund support staff hours at £9.33 per hour, when the actual cost to the school including oncosts for LSAs on the lowest funding grade (incl. oncosts) is £16.18. This means that there is a huge deficit between what we can provide in terms of additional adult support in the classroom and what we are expected to provide. This puts huge pressure on schools and SENDCOs as we try to find ways to implement the section F provision on EHCPs without enough funding. In a few short years the number of children on our SEND register has doubled, yet the amount of LSAs we can afford has remained the same. This is an unsustainable pressure on schools, and teachers who are struggling with the very high levels of children with SEND needs in their classrooms and very limited access to additional adults to support them.
NA

Accountability and inspection of SEND provision

Unless local authorities can effectively support schools with providing them with what they need to support young people with SEND then an ‘inclusion’ Ofsted criterion will simply create more pressure on schools when they are already doing the best they can to cope with a system in crisis.
How responsive are LA caseworkers to communication from schools? This should be part of the inspection as well as; how much impact are LA SEN departments having in terms of improving the SEND offer in schools?
Are local education authorities demonstrating current positive impact that justifies further powers to ensure that all schools in their area contribute to effective local SEND provision?
This is difficult due to the huge variation in SEND local offers in different local authorities. There could be local inspection partnerships taking place whereby SENDCOs visit schools in their local area with an inspection/sharing good practice role as part of the ‘holding to account’ process.
The role of other organisations such as the DfE: adaptations to curriculum offer and requirements for SEND students. More accountability at Primary school level for access arrangements in SATs to be in alignment with the criteria for GCSE. Local Government: more accountability for use and allocation of resources. Social Care Ombudsman and the Care Quality Commission in the accountability system: much more accountability for private companies issuing diagnoses (see above).

January 2025