1

Introduction

1.1

I am submitting this evidence on behalf of the National Association for Virtual School Heads (NAVSH) in response to the cross-party Public Education Accounts Committee call for evidence in relation to ‘finding solutions to the crisis in special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) provisionImproving educational outcomes for disadvantaged children’’. We welcome the opportunity to share insights into the challenges facing all disadvantaged children with such needs. These insights have emerged through our formed in the light of our work supporting looked after children since the initial pilot inception of Virtual Schools in 2007, via the extension of our statutory duties beginning in 2014 to encompass, previously looked after children (2018), those children subject to child in need (CiN) or child protection (CP) plans (2021) and those in kinship care (2024).

1.2

While these groups of children face particular challenges they are also almost 10 times more likely to have an Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP), or be designated as in need of SEND support, than other children and young people. Virtual School Heads (VSH), who NAVSH represent, are therefore all too familiar with the challenges of finding appropriate provision for children, helping schools meet the needs of the children they have a duty to, and dealing with the particular budget challenges related to children in care, in particularhave much in common with the broader cohort of disadvantaged children, including the increased risk of disrupted childhoods and challenges to their emotional health & well-being.

2

Support for children and young people with SENDProgress on narrowing the gap

2.1

Virtual School Heads (VSH) are responsible for promoting the educational outcomes of the children for whom they have a duty and every evaluation of their impact has reported positively. Most recently the DfE policy statement ‘Keeping Children Safe, Helping Families Thrive’ (November 2024) said: The role of the Virtual School Head has had considerable impact since introduction - galvanising the care and education systems to work together to improve educational outcomes. As a result of their intervention, children in care for 12 months or more now have some of the lowest rates of absenteeism of all children (20.0% persistent absence compared to 21.5% for all children in 2023) and of permanent exclusions. This cohort also makes better progress at both Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 4 in comparison with other children in need, and in stark contrast to children on child protection plans. The impact that VSH can have on children with an EHCP or otherwise recognised as having special (or additional) needs is limited by the current arrangements for SEND.

2.2

As well as evidence of impact on outcomes, VSH and their virtual school teams are one of the few local authority education teams still working closely and routinely with almost every state school and alternative provision in the country, irrespective of their academy status, or the ages or SEND of the children they serve. We believe, therefore, that we are particularly well placed to comment on the ways in which mainstream school practice can influence educational outcomes for children with SEND and how government policy can sometimes have unintended consequences on the educational progress of these vulnerablevulnerable and , disadvantaged, children and young people.

2.3

If the gap opportunities offered to children with special needs or a disability are to improve is then the to be significantly narrowed then the nature of the mainstream education offer must be appropriate to their needs of the children and take account of the particular barriers they face. Too often schools, often for reasons of resourcing, are forced to offer a one-size fits all approach. The tightness of school budgets over the last decade has also forced encouraged many mainstream schools to make use of pupil premium to fill more general holes in their budgets, rather than being able to invest in the often individual support disadvantaged children needseek EHCPs as a way of freeing up additional funding, or offering them the leverage they feel they need to move a child onto a special school roll..

2.4

In the case of looked after children, in particular, this can lead to VSH having to support children who have been moved from a local mainstream school to an education provision many miles beyond the LA’s boundary, with resulting increases in the demand on children’s social care and education budgets and the . additional layers of complexity which are then present in order to deal with different LA’s SEN, Admission and funding approaches.  This inevitably further disadvantages our children, who are the mercy of unnecessarily complicated inter-LA arrangements.

3

Current and future SEND needHow well spending focused on disadvantaged children is working

3.1

Pupil premium grants are the principal funding stream available to support disadvantaged children (those in receipt of free school meals). Too often schools report that funding pressures that have only grown over the last decade mean they most often have to use that grant for who school interventions to support disadvantage childrenThe inexorable rise in the level of SEND need over the last decade will continue given the unintended consequences many government policies have exposed over the last decade or more..

3.1.1

The narrowing of the curriculum and qualification range under the previous government, in search of a mythical gold standard for qualification at 16, has demonstrably failed SEND children; alienating rather than engaging them. The abandonment of regular, bite-sized, continuous assessment in favour of all or nothing examination places undue stress on children subject to SEND.

3.1.2

Similarly, the abandonment of more vocational approaches to pre-16 learning, while advantaging those children preferring a 20th century curriculum driven by 19th century ideas of ‘what one needs to know to succeed in the professions’, has failed many children with SEND. There is a risk in this analysis of assuming things about the SEND cohort, but since the range of curriculum offer has been narrowed there has been a corresponding growth in the attainment gap between areas of the country serving more SEND children and those serving more advantaged, less ‘needy’ communities. That difference is broadly mirrored in terms of absence, which is too often blamed on the pandemic alone. The pandemic showed some children with SEND, and their families, that they were happier outside school than within. Government policy over the decade pre-pandemic cannot be excused some responsibility for fostering the inappropriateness of the mainstream educational offer.

3.1.3

School leaders have been faced with increasingly narrow options within an inspection and league table regime too often focussed on narrow measures of attainment & progress and not their inclusivity. Attainment and progress are, absolutely, what children are owed by the education system and process. However, the credit a school receives in its inspection report for keeping a child with special needs on roll is rarely balanced against the impact that child might have had on the school’s average attainment & progress measures.  Inclusion should not need to be at odds with high standards and good outcomes.

3.1.3

Finally, a decade or more of government policy has also endorsed a simplistic carrot and stick model for managing ‘behaviour’ that often exacerbated, rather than met, children’s special needs. While such reward and sanction systems can often work for 80 - 90% of children for 80 - 90% of the time, our experience of schools is that their use without nuance when they patently aren’t working is unhelpful to children subject to SEND. Unhelpful, that is, unless the objective was a steadily increasing use of the ultimate sanction, exclusion, or increasing numbers of children voting with their feet through absence or internal truancy. Indeed, our members sometimes see schools using a child’s absence rate or the regularity with which they are subject to sanctions (up to an including exclusion) as evidence that the child is unsuitable for mainstream education.

3.2

This is the context of (to be charitable ‘unintended’) consequences within which many school leaders have found their more inclusive instincts submerged.

3.3

In the face of these cultural factors and their impact on school policy and practice it is perhaps unsurprising that schools are seeking more SEND support that they ever have. One way to offset the impact a child struggling to conform and deliver a positive contribution to the school’s outcomes is to seek to secure an EHCP and hope they will find a place on a special school roll.

3.4

Unfortunately, there are often insufficient, or inappropriate, special school places available locally. This has sometimes been a consequence of the difficulty local authorities have faced in place planning in an environment in which they could not build a school without a multi-academy trust partner.

3.5

Until a special school place can be found, schools often feel they have no option but to seek an often expensive Alternative Provision (AP) placement which, almost inevitably, offers the child a narrower curriculum without, necessarily, the staffing expertise to meet their particular special need. Alternative Provision settings sometimes share the view with the VSH that they are being used as ‘holding pens’ for children with special needs they are not set up to meet while the LA tries to find the specialist provision the child’s EHCP describes.

3.6

In the face of these pressures VSH have, particularly since the extension of their duties to encompass children subject to CiN and CP plans, used their existing positive relationships with schools and colleges to influence policy and practice across the entire school cohort, including SEND children. Most VSH have offered, or brokered, specialist d training for to schools that can support them to help individual children develop the skills necessary for face the barriers their SEND has erected. The relational strategies VSH have promulgated seek to shift schools from (and this is crudely summarised for reasons of brevity) ‘challenging the child to simply comply with school rules or face school sanctions’, towards creating relationships of trust with children who have found schools unable or unwilling to be flexible in the face of their SEND. With that trust in place it becomes possible to help many more children with SEND to develop the skills they need to meet the expectations schools reasonably have of them.

3.2

This is markedly different from the ring-fenced Pupil Premium Plus (PP+) grant which VSH manage, use centrally within an LA and devolve to schools to support children with particular, individual, needs. It is important to recognise that disadvantaged children are not a homogeneous group any more than are looked after children. They often have individual needs that, too often, school-wide spending of pupil premium does not take account of.

3.3

As well as enabling VSH to target the ring-fenced PP+ funding to the individual children, it offers a key local authority team leverage in influencing school policy and practice. Too often, though, that practice is not adopted across educational settings, despite evidence that it can support disadvantaged, vulnerable, children as a whole.

3.4

To this end, VSH have, since the extension of their duties to encompass children subject to CiN and CP plans, used their existing positive relationships with schools and colleges to influence policy and practice across the entire school cohort, including disadvantaged children. Most VSH have offered training to schools that can support them to help children develop the skills necessary for success that life has not yet encouraged them to develop. The relational strategies VSH have promulgated seek to shift schools from ( and this is crudely summarised for reasons of brevity) ‘challenge the child to simply comply with school rules or face school sanctions’ towards creating relationships of trust with children who have not found the world a very trusting place. With that trust in place it becomes possible to help children develop the skills they need to meet the expectations school reasonably have of them.

3.5

Demands for compliance are not driven by school senior leaders in a vacuum. They face serious challenges to their more inclusive instincts:

3.5.1

The narrowing of the curriculum and qualification range under the previous government, in search of a mythical gold standard for qualification at 16, has demonstrably failed disadvantaged children; alienating rather than engaging them. The abandonment of regular, bite-sized, continuous assessment places undue stress on disadvantaged children already living under significant, often toxic, levels of stress due to home circumstances and community pressures.

3.5.2

Similarly, the abandonment of more vocational approaches to pre-16 learning, while advantaging those children preferring a 20th century curriculum driven by 19th century ideas of ‘what one needs to know to succeed in the professions’, has failed many disadvantaged children. There is a risk in this analysis of assuming things about the disadvantaged cohort, but since the range of curriculum offer has been narrowed there has been a corresponding growth in the attainment gap between areas of the country serving more disadvantaged and those serving more advantaged communities. That difference is broadly mirrored in terms of persistent absence, which is too often blamed on the pandemic alone. The pandemic showed some children, and families, that they were happier outside school than within. Government policy over the decade pre-pandemic cannot be excused some responsibility for fostering that dissatisfaction with the educational offer.

3.5.3

A decade or more of government policy has also endorsed a simplistic carrot and stick model for managing ‘behaviour’. While such reward and sanction systems can often work for 80 - 90% of children for 80 - 90% of the time, our experience of schools is that their use without nuance when they patently aren’t working is unhelpful. Unhelpful, that is, unless the objective was a steadily increasing use of the ultimate sanction, exclusion or increasing numbers of children voting with their feet through absence or internal truancy.

3.5.4

Finally, school leaders have been faced with increasingly narrow options under an inspection regime focussed too often on attainment & progress and not their inclusivity. Attainment and progress are, absolutely, what children are owed by the education system and process. However, the credit a school receives in its inspection report and judgement for keeping a disadvantaged child in school is rarely equally balanced against the impact that child has had on the school’s average attainment & progress.

3.6

In the face of these cultural influencers on school policy and practice it is perhaps unsurprising that schools seek more SEND support that they ever have. One way to offset the impact a child struggling to conform has on a school’s outcome is to seek to secure an EHCP and hope they will find a place on a special school roll. Until that happens, schools often feel they have no alternative but to seek an (often expensive) Alternative Provision placement which, almost inevitably, offers the child a narrower, core, curriculum and ensures that if they are subsequently re-integrated into a mainstream schools they will have missed significant areas of the broader curriculum, and expectations of their attainment in those subjects will be scaled back.

3.7

Our members also report that in the face of budget deficits, many schools have responded by cutting back the pastoral support that can support children to stay in school so they can maintain reasonable teaching class sizes.

4

Current and future SEND provision 

4.1

Demand for SEND provision within or beyond mainstream schools will increase unless the children’s needs can be met earlier and more effectively. That will require changes in the national context described above.

4.2

Until the capacity and capability (and perhaps willingness) of mainstream classrooms to meet SEND improves, increasing numbers of children will continue to be perceived to require ever higher levels of SEND intervention up to and including special education places, perhaps even residential special educational needs placements.

4.3

Enabling LAs, who are responsible for SEND costs, to develop local provision able to meet the local need for specialist provision is therefore vital. Whether through the development of specialist units within mainstream schools or by growing the number of special school places, the current need to partner with and negotiate with a MAT to make such changes only holds back nimble responses to need. It is an example of the imbalance between the influence of MATs and LAs in the sphere of SEND. Mainstream MATs can demand that LAs provide ever more LA provided SEND provision at little or no risk to their own discretionary budgets, while LAs go bankrupt.

5

Accountability and inspection of SEND provision 

5.1

NAVSH views this issue as relating more to the way in which SEND provision and the needs of children subject to SEND are met within mainstream schools than the inspection of special schools.

5.1.1

School inspection frameworks should value the policy, practice and statistics of inclusion of SEND children and those with additional emotional health and well-being needs as much as the overall attainment and progress measures of the school. Schools should get credit for keeping children with SEND on roll and managing their needs without resorting to often complex and always expensive assessments.

5.1.2

Local authority inspection frameworks should take a view on the way in which pressure from mainstream schools is providing additional barriers to the quality of SEND local offer.

5.1.3

When mainstream MATS or their individual schools are making disproportionate demands on the LA SEND budget, the Regional Director should be empowered to require their involvement in, and accountability for, any improvements required following a SEND inspection.

6

Finance, funding and capacity of SEND provision 

6.1

The financial demands of meeting the needs of children with SEND will rise in line with demand unless that demand is reduced &/or the cost of SEND provision is reduced. This has been, and continues to be, driven by:

6.1.1

An academisation programme which required LAs to bid for service level agreements to provide support to schools through, for instance, regular consultations with educational psychologists. Too often this has rendered some LA SEND support and inclusion services unviable.

6.1.2

Financial constraints on schools which have often forced them to make difficult choices between teaching staff budgets and the pastoral and related budgets necessary to support children with SEND to make expected progress. It becomes cheaper for a mainstream school to outsource the costs to the LA SEEND budget.

6.1.3

Taken together these factors have created the unintended consequence of encouraging schools to seek SEND assessments for which LAs are financially responsible. Schools have little to lose by seeking such assessments which are likely to have negligible impact on their budgets.

6.2

Where the special needs of a child cannot be met locally, because there are insufficient or inappropriate places available, LAs have increasingly opted for out of area private special education placements, often with associated care costs.

6.3

Where the child is looked after by the local authority the number of out of area care placements of children with additional or special needs offer a particular challenge to the VSH responsible for promoting their education:

6.3.1

Finding the right specialist education placement, either close to an out of area foster placement, or one combined with an out of area private care provision, take a disproportionate length of time, meaning looked after children can spend far too long in a series of temporary education placements or out of education all together.

6.3.2

The cost of a private care placement for a looked after child which also provides education is invariably more expensive than any local provision, sometimes orders of magnitude more expensive as costs can exceed £100,000 per year. The pressure this places on local children’s social care & SEND services, even if health services make a contribution, is obvious and often crippling.

6.3.3

When a looked after child with SEND is placed in a local Alternative Education Provision but has to then move to an out of area care placement the challenge of finding an appropriate or equivalent education placement is significant. When alternative provisions were manged and funded by local authorities this could often be negotiated between the home VSH and the VSH for the LA where the child now lives. As Alternative Provisions have either become private or been taken into MATs, or require MAT funding to operate, those negotiations now take much longer.

6.3.4

A looked after child with an EHCP who moves to an out of area care placement should have responsibility for maintaining that plan passed to the LA in which they live. However, the challenges this presents to a VSH responsible for monitoring their progress via an LA with different SEND thresholds and processes are large and are a factor to be considered when out of area SEND attainment and progress is assessed compared to those living and being educated locally.

6.3.5

The different ways in which Alternative Provisions are managed and funded and the budget pressures on the out of area LA mean the home VSH faces a different set of rules for the recoupment of funding for such places. Some LAs still judge that when a looked after child lives within their boundary they are treated just as a local looked after child, with costs covered in the same way. Many more now feel they do not have the budget to do so, particularly if they are a popular location for the setting up of private children’s homes. In those circumstances they can demand additional funding from the home LA for places their local children get ‘free’.

47.0

In conclusion

74.1

Virtual Schools have are well-placed to offer a view on the quality of SEND provisions across the sector and across the countrymade good use of the targeted, and ring-fenced, funding they have received to narrow significant gaps between looked after children and other disadvantaged groups..

74.2

Virtual Schools have maintained their routine, and generally positive, relationships with schools when many schools look less towards the local authority and more to their multi-academy trust.

74.3

The increasing remit of Virtual School’s increasing remit has stimulated greater cooperation between various LA services and schools, providing support to increase the inclusivity of schools’ learning cultures.

74.4

However, as described above, schools and the broader education system adapts to the context government creates for them.

74.5

If there is to be a significant improvement in the offer to, and outcomes of, children with SENDnarrowing of the gap in educational outcomes of disadvantaged children, government must create a context for mainstream schools that makes it easier, indeed advantageous, for them to:

• offer a curriculum n appropriate and appealing to children with SENDcurriculum;
• use assessment models appropriate to the needs of the SEND cohortmore likely to engage than disillusion;
• gain the credit they deserve for their inclusive instincts and practice in relation to SEND..

7.6

Government must also re-balance the relationship between LAs and MATs to ensure:

• MATs shoulder a realistic proportion of the costs and accountability for SEND provision in an LA where their school(s) serve the local community;

LAs have more influence over MAT policy and practice when they judge they are disproportionately driving up demand for SEND assessments.

7.7

There is a pressing need for a review the guidance on looked after children with SEND, particularly when they have an EHCP, and are placed out of their home LA. This review should:

7.7.1

Ensure there is no post code lottery that disadvantages looked after children who move to an out of area care placement relative to those who remain within their home LA.

7.7.2

• Ensure that EHCPs are maintained by the service best able to ensure they have a consistent and significant impact if the looked after child changes education or care setting, irrespective of whether those settings are within or outside the child’s home LA.

7.7.3

• Address the risk of profiteering by private providers of care and education placements.

7.7.4

• Review and clarify the SEND and related recoupment arrangements between LAs to ensure they are consistently applied by all LAs.

7.84.6

This is, therefore, not just a question of funding and whether, for instance, the free school meals based pupil premium paid to schools has been more or less effective in narrowing the gap it is targeted at, than the ring-fenced pupil premium plus VSH have used to support looked after children.

The root is in a government policy that is joined up, takes account of unintended consequences, and genuinely seeks to improve life chances in disadvantaged children with special educational needs or disabilities (and indeed additional needs before they become special needs) by improving their experience of education and providing the opportunities they, and their families, want and deserve.