SEN0431

Written evidence submitted by Royal Society for Blind Children

 

 

1.  Introduction

 

  1. The Royal Society for Blind Children (RSBC) has been educating and supporting blind and partially sighted children and young people, and their families, for over 185 years. Our vision is for every blind child to realise their aspirations and live their life without limits. We deliver a range of services online and face-to-face in local communities throughout England and Wales.  We offer a continuum of holistic support which is available to the whole family, including: activities to reduce isolation and loneliness and increase independence; emotional wellbeing support; and support for young people to imagine and achieve their ambitions for the future.

 

  1. RSBC has been providing education for over 60 years; with over 15 years of hybrid provision. RSBC Dorton College is a specialist independent Further Education (FE) College for vision impaired (VI) young people aged 16-25 years. Students come from local authorities across London and the Southeast. Our unique model means they can access most of their education locally, in mainstream education providers, and spend time each week at our Dorton College Hub to learn and develop skills tailored to their individual needs. Each student has a curriculum bespoke to their individual requirements and EHCP. Our specialist staff work with a range of therapists covering mobility and habilitation, independent life skills, speech and language therapy and occupational therapy.

 

  1. Research into our model of VI hybrid provision demonstrates it is highly effective. Students feel they get ‘the best of both worlds’ - receiving a better standard of education and achieving positive academic outcomes. They also feel they have more friends at a hybrid provision, as they have both mainstream and SEND peer groups. By collaboratively blending specialist provision with mainstream provision, we maximise educational opportunities for students and amplify the effectiveness of each.

 

  1. We are submitting evidence for the Committee’s consideration as we believe our blended approach to sustainable inclusive education provides a blueprint which can be more widely adopted across the SEND sector. While RSBC’s hybrid provision to date has focused on FE, there is no reason why this type of  education could not be extended to school age children.  Indeed, this is something RSBC hopes to trial itself in the near future. We would be happy to provide any further information or detail that might support the Committee in this inquiry.

 

 

2. Solutions must be grounded in offering the right support, at the right time, and with the right expertise

 

  1. Outcomes for SEND students can only be improved if they are given the right support at the right time with the right expertise. The “Report of the Committee of Enquiry into the Education of Handicapped Children and Young People” (1978, commonly known as the “Warnock Report”) stated that student needs should be met on an individual basis. This remains true in 2025. The Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP) evolved from the seed of the Warnock Report. However, after several evolutions these are now proving ineffective in many cases due to inefficiency of implementation, accountability, and consistency on a national scale, as reported in the Green Paper (2022).

 

  1. As Tania Tirraro suggested in “How has special education needs evolved in the 40 years since the Warnock Report?” (2020), the evolution of SEND support has not always been in line with necessity, capability, financial, specialist, demographic and operational, and need far outweighs capacity, especially for the most vulnerable students.

 

  1. This is particularly pertinent for low incidence disabilities such as VI, which accounts for around 1% of all Special Educational Needs (SEN) - defined as VI and having an EHCP; and a further 0.9 diagnosed VI but with no EHCP (View, 2023).

 

  1. The Curriculum Framework for Children and Young People with Vision Impairment, or CFVI, was developed in 2022 to help children and young people with VI to access appropriate and equitable education. It aims to provide three elements of VI specialist practice in education at all stages:
  1. the elements of specialist skill development, interventions and best practice support that are essential for children and young people with VI;
  2. qualified specialist practitioners who raise awareness amongst other professionals and parents of the need for children and young people with VI to be taught skills that enable them to access the curriculum and the wider world with as much independence as possible; and
  3. aiding discussions and understanding amongst all involved in a child/young person’s education of how and when these skills should be taught by suitably qualified specialists and reinforced by non-specialists.

 

  1. This final point highlights the necessity for unified delivery of education, incorporating the specialist skills that VI students require alongside non-specialist delivery. Our research shows students benefit significantly from this blended approaching comparison to other provisions such as mainstream and general SEND provisions, ensuring that needs are met, integration occurs, and specialist support is delivered at the right time and in the right places. Students told us about their experiences of non-hybrid provision. In their own words:

 

‘My LSA had to spend an hour before each school day to make my work accessible and I had to teach my LSA braille in the first place. I would be teaching them instead of them teaching me’.

 

‘I was stuck in a corner without any help’

 

‘I was the only VI person in school’

 

‘It’s been a struggle to make friends’

 

  1. The challenges, and therefore solutions required, are also reflected clearly in the results of RSBC’s recent annual survey. When we asked what the top 5 challenges were for VI children and families, SEND came out extremely clearly, with families responding:

 

Alongside this, professionals told us:

 

 

3. Blending specialist and mainstream education, and adopting a hybrid approach, is proven to be highly effective and provides students with ‘the best of both worlds’

 

  1. Our approach combines mainstream education seamlessly with independent specialist education. We refer to this as a ‘hybrid’ model. While RSBC Dorton College’s model is focused on delivering quality education for VI young people aged 16 to 25, the principles can be applied to broader age groups and other specialist needs.

 

  1. ‘Hybrid’ means that students spend 3-4 days a week at a mainstream provider on an ESFA subcontracted basis, while remaining on the RSBC roll. They are supported by a specialist VI Learning Support Assistant (LSA) at the partnership college, with the students’ work being resourced in advance of each lesson into whatever format they require, such as Braille, raised diagrams, tactile pictures or bespoke contrast papers and font. This is individually prepared for each student. The student’s equipment is kept in the mainstream college and the LSA ensures the student is supported discreetly, and at the right moments, to develop independence and autonomy over their learning.

 

  1. Students spend the remainder of the week at our specialist Hub doing VI and wider SEND specialist work - such as therapeutic interventions, independence skills and ensuring that their EHCP needs are fully met.

 

  1. This model is currently in place for students from Entry Level 1 up to Level 3 and A Level. Students choose a course they would like to study at a mainstream college or sixth form, and we then build a partnership with the college around the student.

 

  1. The third aim cited within the CFVI underlines the importance of why this hybrid approach works. Ultimately, students with VI are living in a sighted world, and need support to gain vital skills in sighted schools, workplaces and socially to prepare them for life after education more holistically.

 

  1. Our students can achieve their aspirations through tailored specialist support whilst accessing a mainstream provision. We are immensely proud of the outstanding results that this model helps to achieve, with consistently high rates of achievement year after year.

 

  1. As part of recent research, students were asked to speak about their experience of the hybrid model. In their own words:

 

‘Good in the sense that you are part of the mainstream setting and that is how the rest of the world is going to be once you have finished education. So, it helps you get used to that and be able to navigate that. But then you’re still in a supportive environment where you know how to get help and access to all the right things’

 

‘When you’re in the real-world you learn to advocate for yourself and get those needs met’.

 

‘It’s been really positive; I wasn’t sure what to expect…its quite a good system. Quite seamless.’

 

‘I feel like I’ve been able to like access education in just a better way and it’s also been nice to have like a non-VI-person experience while still having that.’

 

Students also said that:

 

 

 

  1. A considerable barrier to achieving consistent levels of specialist support currently is the small number of Qualified Teacher of Children and Young People with Vision Impairment (QTVIs). There are around 41,000 VI children and young people in the UK (TPT, 2018), and the majority go to mainstream schools.  However, there are only around 650 QTVIs across the UK, and recruiting to these roles can be extremely challenging and time-consuming, even for an organisation with considerable networks and heritage in this space, such as RSBC.

 

 

 

4. Funding transparency: solutions must deliver value for money without compromising on quality or student needs

 

  1. Over 50% of our students come from failed previous placements, and some come from multiple failed placements. Evidence from our research suggests most students had negative experiences at a range of previous schools and FE providers where their needs were not being met, often resulting in the breakdown of their placement.

 

  1. Multiple failed placements results in a failure for students, requiring them to spend longer in the education system to meet their academic outcomes. It also fails to provide value for money and creates a false economy for the funding system. We see many students who have previously been sent to the cheapest available option, but the reality of providing lower cost support means sacrificing quality that is essential for the student’s achievement. For example: one student had 3 previous FE placements before coming to RSBC Dorton College. Other providers stated that the student’s needs could be met but failed to do so. Pressures on cost meant that skills such as Braille or mobility were not included; specialist QTVI sessions were only offered once per term; and only the most basic support was provided. In contrast, with our focus on quality at RSBC Dorton College, our hybrid offer ensures 1-1 specialist support is delivered on a weekly basis, meaning that students progress faster as their confidence increases, and their funding provides better return on investment because they are more likely to succeed and achieve positive outcomes.

 

  1. To ensure full transparency around how fees are calculated, RSBC Dorton College presents its fees through a full cost recovery model, breaking each area down into the number of hours delivered over the course of a year. This means that fees for each student are based on what it costs RSBC to sustainably deliver the education they require and there is no ambiguity around how funding is spent. Securing value for money is an understandable concern, and the nature of bespoke support to ensure each student is equipped to succeed means that the costs associated are higher. Therefore, full transparency around how provision is costed is key. 

 

 

5. Solutions must have appropriate accountability, collaboration, consistency and capacity built in

 

  1. Mainstream and specialist providers need to be held to a more transparent and robust accountability system regarding how the EHCP requirements are being met. This is particularly important in a system where some find it harder to advocate for themselves and their needs.

 

  1. In order to achieve accountability,  EHCPs need to be regularly updated. When a student’s Annual Review takes place, Local Authority representatives and other key stakeholders are more often than not unable to attend, and while recommendations for changes to a student’s EHCP can be made by RSBC, they are not acted on, year after year. We have welcomed FE students with EHCPs that are unchanged from primary school. Unless an EHCP is up to date and reflective of needs, upholding accountability is nigh on impossible.

 

  1. Some specialist education providers do not collaborate to ensure that specialist skillsets for students with VI or other low incidence needs or complex conditions can be best met. Increased collaboration between specialist providers should be nurtured and made statutory to ensure that specialist skills are working ‘cross provision’ within SEND specialist providers so that the students’ needs remain at the core.

 

  1. Mainstream providers may not have the specialist expertise to support a student in their provision, which can result in a placement being declined. Hybrid provision and greater collaboration is the answer, as the specialist provides the SEND expertise and the mainstream provider delivers the courses. However, in RSBC’s recent experience when reaching out to prospective new partners, many were averse to having VI students on site due to perceived liability or risk, even with a hybrid partnership arrangement in place. Some mainstream providers simply responded that they didn’t have external partnerships with any other colleges, while others ignored all requests. Therefore, collaboration needs to be actively encouraged, and ideally incentivised, so that mainstream providers are receptive to partnership working. While the impact is yet to be understood, the recent introduction of VAT to independent specialist education provider fees may add further perceived barriers to mainstream and specialist collaboration.

 

  1. Consistency on a national scale between Local Authorities is another key area for reform. RSBC is a small provider, currently working with 13 Local Authorities across London and the South East of England; however, we have encountered enormous differences between them, for example, in areas such as the quality of EHCP’s, funding agreements, accountability and communication.

 

  1. Inspection within SEND lacks consistency. High Needs Inspectors must have a much better understanding of a wider range of complex needs. RSBC has experienced several instances where High Needs Inspectors have not understood VI specialist teaching techniques, which were not addressed adequately despite escalation.

 

 

6. Summary recommendations and solutions

 

  1. For hybrid education to be piloted at a regional level, with a view to long-term UK-wide adoption if successful. Pilots should ideally be developed in partnership with organisations, like RSBC, with existing models and learning to collaboratively build on and adapt.

 

  1. For cross-provider collaboration to be encouraged (or even incentivised) to ensure the best possible support and care for each student is prioritised based on specialism and quality.

 

  1. For the government to conduct a concerted recruitment drive to increase the number of qualified specialists and professionals across the UK, such as QTVIs, and ensure funded specialist support can be delivered regularly by qualified professionals with the relevant specialist expertise.

 

  1. For EHCPs to be updated regularly, with appropriate specialist input, and for Local Authority caseloads to be manageable enough that this can be facilitated more easily and effectively.

 

  1. For education support funding to operate on an “open book” transparent basis to overcome fear of lack of value for money and ensure a ‘right first time’ quality focus.

 

  1. For funding to incorporate the full spectrum of accessibility requirements that a child or young person might have for their learning to be achieved, such as assistive technology or transportation costs.

 

 

We would welcome the opportunity to discuss any of the points we have raised, invite members of the Committee to visit RSBC Dorton College to see the model in practice or to explore the research and evidence which underpins the recommendations set out in this paper.

 

 

January 2025

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