SEN0198

Written evidence submitted by Mr Simon Jeffery

There is a clear lack of understanding in early years and thereafter main stream school regarding SEND. Teachers appear to have no/little training of SEND. Also, do they teach the children the value of accepting other students who may have SEND issues? The DFE need to challenge the local authorities and in turn them challenging the schools to show how they have embraced SEND.

Providing successful outcomes for SEND students will only happen is schools embrace the positive aspects of having the inclusivity of SEND students and not see them as a burden. All schools should have a ‘Hive’ or ‘Hub’ facility within their schools and staffed accordingly with specialist teachers who can work with children with SEN who need a nurture based environment.

It should be mandatory that all staff undertake extensive SEND training to give them the tools to identify children at an early age who may have SEND and also when these children have been identified with SEND the teachers have the skills and knowledge to help them.

There needs to be a strategic review of the whole EHC process, currently it’s not fit for purpose. It’s far too bureaucratic and takes far too long for an outcome. The is no reason why the complete process can’t take no more than 4 weeks from submission to the point of decision. There is too much expectation on the parents driving an EHC submission. Parents have no experience of the requirements for a successful outcome of an EHC. There heeds to be a defined body who can take on the process in conjunction with the parent. There is too much expectation that a parent have the skills and knowledge to submit such a document. Far too many parents don’t do a submission because they don’t have the necessary skills.

There needs to be a collaboration of all invested parties across the UK in providing a blueprint of standards and objectives of SEND that everyone, local authorities, schools and parents can use.

Children identified as SEN need to stop being marked down as unauthorised absences. This is a point of great frustration to parents/carers as they would willingly love to see their children in school and play no part in keeping them out of school. Writing letters and fining parents serves no purpose and only forces those parents to off-roll their children. 

Mainstream schools don’t want SEND students because they are far too results driven with league tables for exam results. SEND students are seen as a negative who will drive down the scores. Students identified with SEND need to be ring-fenced so their performance is not judged in the same way as other students This would encourage schools to accept taking SEND students as they won’t affect their league-table outcome.

SEND students need a different curriculum to that of main stream students, a curriculum based more of practical life coping skills to help them in their early adult years and beyond.

Every local authority needs to be given the funding to scale up the educational places for students with SEND. Some mainstream schools are trying to provide for SEND students, others appear to actively discourage these students. All local authorities need to have standalone specialized SEND school(s) Having such facilities will help drive down exclusion rates and parents off-rolling their children from main stream schools because generally they don’t understand these students or want to/have the resources to give these students additional help.

Far too many school see SEND students a negative for no other reason is that they are going to cost them money and resources that they don’t have. The school have to fund the first £6K of any provision, this cost needs to be absorbed by the local authority/central government funding. In addition there needs to be some sort of financial benefit for schools providing first class SEN facilities.

Ofstead needs to be far more rigorous with challenging schools about the their provision of SEND. Providing SEND provision needs to be seen as a positive amongst schools. There is far too many school doing the bare minimum to tick a box. It needs to be seen that schools not providing SEN provision do not receive a favourable overall Ofstead rating. Schools need to see that providing excellent SEN is a mandatory requirement to gaining a positive Ofstead outcome. 

January 2025