Written evidence submitted by Dr Angela Thompson

Summary

In the document below I will outline suggested solutions and improvements covering the following areas which have been informed by the questions posed in the call for evidence. The focus is driven by my research and experience on developmental literacy difficulties (dyslexia) and my experience of navigating the system. However, the findings from this apply more widely to SEND in general

Who am I and why do I and why do I want to contribute?

I am officially a trailblazer

(British Dyslexia Award 2024 https://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/news/bda-annual-awards-2024-a-review )

I have an unusual configuration of skills, experience, expertise and commitment, some of which are covered in the award write up, that are of great help to the committee. I have some of these skills because of support from my husband who assisted me due to my severe dyslexia. I was a parent governor of a failing primary school and was instrumental in turning it around. I used the expertise gained in helping my children secure support to help other parents across the country to access the system and secure their child’s needs, so I have a ‘national perspective’. Sometimes parents wanted a mainstream school with additional provision, sometimes parents and their child needed placement in a specialist setting. My research was highly innovative. Unusually it took this from the parents’ perspective and knowledge but also used teachers on the front line to explore the issues. The thesis title was “The Illusion of Inclusion”. It found out how inclusion as applied was often disabling, how schools generated disability or could enable child progress and agency,  how many of the pupils operated on the edge of failure, how teachers lacked knowledge to make effective decisions, how parents sought to manage a disabling environment, and generate a model of the education system that can describe barriers to education from an individual child, group of children or policy perspective. I have gone on to publish and present on the issues and I’m awaiting publication of a key paper (in press) on the importance of diagnosis for children with developmental literacy difficulties (dyslexia). I was coauthor on a paper about stakeholders’ perspectives on the EHCP process. My two children despite very severe levels of dyslexia and associated SEND were successful, one completed his degree with a good award and successfully works in a technical analyst environmental post, the other is doing a high-level stem subject at a leading university. I got their opinions of what mattered to include in this submission. I have a lot to say about this topic as I know from personal experience and my research just how damaging the current ethos and processes are for children with unremediated dyslexia and concurrent developmental differences are, and how devastating for life chances, health and wellbeing that is. However, what I found means the same issues will apply more broadly to SEND, something the examiners of the PhD picked up on. My research suggests ways that this story could be different. I can now speak freely on the subject as my youngest son left the EHCP system in June last year and there are no legal issues outstanding.

Support for children and young people with SEND

I am going to start by challenging some stated assumptions by the Committee Chair in the launch of this call for evidence and the Secretary of State in her recent speech on school standards.

The chair stated

“Despite the best efforts of professionals in schools and local authorities, across the country, children are being let down”

It is not clear what was been understood by the term ‘best efforts’. Our experience and my observations of the parents I helped and the research was that the best efforts were patchy. It sometimes could appear that more effort was applied to obstructing securing a child’s needs or the use strategies perceived saving the school or Local Authority money or delaying immediate costs. From your questions it can be seen the committee is aware of this. Some individuals may make best efforts but the culture of school management, or Local Authority or DfE guidance is limiting. An honest appraisal as a start point, required by the committee is that schools and Local Authorities in many cases at various points are not providing ‘best efforts’ directed at the individual child and family. This starts with local councillors speaking with ignorance about SEND (see Warwickshire County Council for an example) conveying denigration and dismissal and they are seemingly  are unable to effectively or inappropriately  scrutinise the work of the LA in this area, it goes onto LA taking training and advice from aggressive solicitors in how to use the law to evade or minimise their obligations as would be understood in the spirit of the law (part 3 section 19  Children and Families Act opening statement ) and ends up with children left damaged. What follows are some suggestions to improve matters.

Description of the school structure

The New and novel description of the Structure of Education (the Arc of Education) derived from user data (Thompson 2021). To understand how the system can be turned around there is a need for a proper description of the system. This work was derived from parents and teacher accounts.

The Structure of Education (the Arc of education) Derived from user Data (Thompson 2021)

 

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School view of school system

This shows points of discontinuity and relationship to school policy in the white cut out. NB  It is a little misleading in that graphing it up there was a problem in that the points of discontinuity appear to stop at policy but in reality are bedded right into the centre to the child, this is particularly true of inclusion policies which may generate what the I termed in the research ‘Disabling Inclusion’

Parents observation from evidence in blue cut outs

 

 

 

 

 

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Solutions/Actions

These are the key solutions and actions that are required to help resolve the SEND crisis. Each will be dealt with in more detail below.

Data collection

Inclusion

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This model could be easily adapted to a check list to identify for each child across each subject what was the level of inclusion and identification of barriers, it could be used and at the Ofsted level as well. An adapted version could also be used to assist in inter-year/inter-phase/inter-institution transfer.

A version of this could also be developed that looks at co-production. There is a pervasive sense of educational reviews and formal meetings being a form of ‘ceremony’ where parents and others are simply in the room and their contributions are ignored.

It has been mentioned many times, not least in the last Education Select Committee inquiry, that the law as it stands is the right one, it just has not been implemented. So, for the avoidance of doubt the key issue is:

Regulators need reform and to have meaningful penalties

 

Broad general practice

●       Parents need clear information about how their child is engaging and progressing. There needs to be clear communication in both directions between school and parents. Too often parents who try to engage meet barriers

●       Some parents can be difficult to engage but understanding why is important.  Training in skills in engaging in effective communication would be of help.

●       Handover between schools, (also involving parents) and also between years in a school, needs significant improvement – too much knowledge about a child’s needs is lost or not actioned in a timely way, between years and between schools even in ‘good’ schools. Please see Arc of Education above, this describes the structural features of education and by implication identifies the failure points for any given child or group of children and suggests policy and practice issues.

●       Recognition many of these children with SEND are what my research termed ‘operating close the edge of failure’, they are progressively becoming more disabled/damaged out of sight, small changes can have outsize impact for good or ill, Schools need look to understand when children are under duress and listen effectively to parents who may report it.

●       A focus upon areas of strength and promoting the idea of individual profiles, rather than uniformity or class level decision making

●       Have a twin track of accommodation/remediation. Accommodation to give access to learning, but importantly remediation has to be an important key part, accommodation (universal design for learning for example) on its own disables more.

●       Move beyond mantras that phonics is the solution (dressed up as evidence based). For around 5% of children, it is pursuing it that causes great lasting damage. Contra to the DfE advice on teaching reading, the solution if phonics fails is not more phonics.

●       Timely intervention

Finance and Management

●       Targets and incentives for schools to drive good practice, not discouraging intervention to save money or effectively applying penalties to other children if a school has a child with additional needs. The £6,000 penalty for every child with SEND

●       Reduce fragmentation of the system* expanded below

Health and Care

●       CAMHS needs to be centrally funded as part of the NHS. It is currently effectively under LA control. Treating mental health issues such as ADHD in a timely manner will have a significant impact. At the moment a child can be diagnosed privately but still not be able to access essential medication because GP will not do shared care, and the child has to sit waiting on a list for many years before being able to access essential treatment. Meanwhile long lasting, in some cases permanent, damage has been done. Not to mention those who cannot afford private assessment.

Additional Notes

Data collection

The DfE has adopted a changed stance with respect to Dyslexia since the Conservative Government assumed sole control in 2014. They have progressively apparently supported or removed the visibility of dyslexia and contested its narrative and redefined it outside what is the agreed definitions of a multifaceted complex profile (see Delphi Study definition), in what was already in reality a low visibility under identified disability profile. And now have removed dyslexia from the 2021 guidance of teaching reading. Visibility is very important. It is true for hidden disabilities which get overlooked or minimized against more prominent and visible ones (see paper: Seeing, been Seen and Being able to See Dyslexia Thompson, Wood, Thompson and Carroll in press)

In 2019 I did some analysis of the school outcomes from DfE published data for 2017/18 for the APPG Dyslexia-SPLD report the cost of dyslexia in education, and was able to show that for those with SpLD they secured GCSE Maths and English at half the rate of typically developing peers for pass 4 and about a third for pass 5. This was the same impact as poverty, something I know the SoS is passionate about. The following year that data disappeared. It has not been possible to track the level of deficits by different SEND groups since. The current categorisation into low, middle or high achieving does not allow children with complex profiles to be properly represented. No data, no clarity. What is needed is to have that detailed data by group characteristics back so the barriers to different groups can be properly tracked and identified.  Without data that is transparent to all, it will not ever be possible to resolve the SEND crisis, indeed the lack of effective data gathering may well have been a contributory factor.

My research highlighted that in many cases parents were not aware of how far behind their peers their child was if a child is performing below expected, then it carries on year on year but there is no indicator if the gap is narrowing or getting larger. I am currently doing research at a school that has been spectacularly successful in improving literacy (a secondary boys school in an area of multi deprivation and vulnerability), here every child and their parents knows their reading age as it is written on the from on their diary/form books and assessed 2 or 3 times per year.

** https://cdn.bdadyslexia.org.uk/uploads/documents/About/APPG/Educational-cost-of-dyslexia-APPG-for-Dyslexia-and-other-SpLDs-October-2019.pdf?v=1632303330

Inclusion

The DfE needs to be clear why they are pursuing inclusion? If it is simply to manage costs, they need to recognise good quality inclusion for this group will not be a cheap option. In fact it is not hard to make the case that cheap now is very, very expensive long term. They also need to recognise that if a philosophical position is driving this, they need to address the ways in which they are sabotaging it and creating damaged children and challenged schools. Warnock was clear when she proposed integration and inclusion it was on the basis of sufficient appropriate support. The Göransson and Nilholm’s four level hierarchy is a good starting point. The thesis The illusion of inclusion deconstructs how and why the system creates more disability and by implication suggests ways forward (Thompson, 2021).

 

Teaching children with Developmental Differences

It is often alleged by some academics and has informed some of the DfE thinking that children with and without a diagnosis do not need any difference in teaching.

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The extract above is from an LA Educational Psychologist (unsympathetic to dyslexia and to specialist provision). Her report is of our son’s lesson describing an English lesson in a specialist placement for a top set English group year 10 exploring poetic devices. Our son went on to get a grade 8 & 7 in English lit and language the following year having arrived not knowing what a noun or a verb was. The point is that the teaching style for this group is commensurate with year 3/4/5 and that while the content was appropriately age related the teaching was not. Your average top set 15/16-year-old would not be happy with this type of teaching. And there lies the challenge for many children with dyslexia in mainstream education, they are out of time and out of phase on core skills that give agency and independence not only now but for their future. The solution needs to incorporate difference in delivery for meeting overall inclusion.

Regulators

Ofsted

The draft report card is a move in the right direction. There needs to be more focus on the number of children excluded from a school. Children can also be excluded within the school. It is not unusual for SEND children to be dumped in hubs with no support. In one case I know of, a child’s total education experience was patting alpacas (fortunately a tribunal agreed with his parents and he is now studying for GCSEs at a specialist independent school, his literacy was 7 years behind when mum approached me for advice). The value-add for SEN children also needs to be considered, again something that needs data to monitor. The suggestion is to use both the Arc of Education* and the Göransson and Nilholm framework* to evaluate the degree to which children are experiencing non or partial inclusion and the identification of the barriers to it. This needs to form part of the Ofsted inquiry of a school.

Inspectors also need to listen to the parents’ experiences. In a relatively recent area inspection, the inspectors appeared to be trying to avoid parents’ input, eventually conceding to doing just one online group meeting of 1 hour. The feedback did not reflect the depth and degree of anger by a very large attendance of parents. Covering up or minimising just means it takes longer to resolve and correct service failure.

 

HCPC

Key players in the SEND area are Educational Psychologists (EPs) who typically are employed by a local authority.  Our experience of dealing with HCPC for what were fairly challenging complaints was that it was deeply stressful, prolonged and highly unsatisfactory and ineffective. Whilst we have met some very good local authority EP’s there seem to be too be some who see their role as blocking the identification of need or creating favourable evidence to support an LA case, to avoid the local authority spending money. It’s not entirely clear to us that all LA EP’s are able to produce unedited/unapproved reports. EPs need to realise that their professional duty is to the child and not balancing the LA’s books. For instance, I reviewed a report on one of my children and there were 120 errors, mischaracterisations, and misleading statements in a 10-page report. Unfortunately, HCPC is ineffective in regulating this. They seemingly leave it up to the employer (the local authority) to investigate complaints about EPs, HCPC needs to do more and radically review its practices and make them more sensitive and have a greater range of sanctions.

Local government and social care ombudsman

The ombudsman needs sharper teeth. They resisted this at the last inquiry by the Select committee, despite their frustration at the overwhelming number of complaints.  At the moment they give the LAs an effective slap on the wrist, for example £500 compensation awarded when a child has been left out of school for a year, the wrongdoing saved the LA tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds. It is ineffective and actually promotes unlawful practice by greenlighting non-compliant conduct.

Practice and culture

This is going to take a structural cultural change which sets limits on the ‘mainstream’ mantra, and, to recognise that for a small number of students with severe dyslexia they will need placement in specialist schools (not special school- there is a difference). As discussed above there is a need to have a range of teaching environment options. However, there is at least one mainstream school that elected to change its curriculum and culture to focus on literacy and to turn around the lives of many children who had managed to turn up to Secondary school with depressed literacy scores. The impact of having a whole school approach to literacy with fine grained data analysis, effective tracking, high quality teaching and effective intervention is powerful to see. Even in these settings though there are children who need more. School culture is really important. My son ended up in 4 primary schools, only one of which, the last, was truly inclusive. The question is if one can do it why not all. For many of the other schools the school policy framework (the yellow circle in the Arc of Education) can result in uniform approaches on the basis of being ‘fair’ which marginalise or obstruct a child being a member of the school and local community. An example was where children were required to write and then read out their application to be a school council member, when one child with literacy difficulties did that, he was humiliated as he was unable to read his own words. So school governors need to really engage with and scrutinise policy and practice to ensure bias and unintended barriers are not erected. Possible solutions would be to recruit to Governing Bodies independent experts with a role of challenging SEND provision and practice and the skills to examine data and hold listening meetings with parents and pupils.

The DfE need to recognise that phonics does not work for everyone. There are a small number of children (about 5%) who this does not work for. The current approach by most schools based on current DfE ad vice (2021) is to keep repeating what has already failed, rather than trying something else. This is deeply flawed. This advice rendered dyslexia invisible.

Finance and Management

In the call for evidence there was a question about whether local education authorities need further powers to ensure that all schools in their area contribute to effective local SEND provision. Yes they do. The system is fragmented. LAs are responsible for excluded pupils, not academies, but the LA have little control over how academies operate exclusion policies. An academy should not be able to exclude a pupil and wash their hands of them, dumping them on the LA.

LAs need to be empowered to set up and manage their own provision. Current models set up by previous governments are based on the LA providing the money and then external organisations, whether academies or independent provision manage the service. The LA don’t have control on how things are run or costs managed.

Thinking of the children and young people with really profound disabilities (perhaps costing £500,000 or more a year), its really iniquitous that those costs fall on local authorities, especially as many of the costs can be seen as health or care rather than just education. There are some providers who are not big corporates, and their expertise needs to be used (for example National Star college) to set up other provision. Perhaps regional rather than LA administered funding from central government.

The call for evidence had a question about excessive profit-making in the independent sector. This is not true for all independent provision. Many specialist schools particularly those that deal with dyslexia are small independent organisations which don’t make profits or are limited in doing so. These need to be supported to enable placements at a competitive price and to meet a gap that cannot be met by mainstream. No matter how good the provision is at a school there will always be a need for some children with specific learning difficulties profile to need a specialist placement to repair damage and ensure inclusion at the post education level. There needs to be a 10-year strategy to move away from high-margin corporates to more competitive solutions.

Innovation

I have been trying to contact someone in the DfE to talk about my highly important and innovative PhD but got no response. My MP was also brushed off. The DfE needs to listen to the small voice as well as the big voices. The people doing innovative work need to be embraced and not locked out.

Health and Care

Many children with SEND have co-occurring health conditions, particularly mental health. Children’s mental health services are in crisis. In most areas children cannot get an appointment with CAMHS unless there is serious risk of suicide or similar. Whilst I would suggest that for ADHD, adaptions should be put in school first, diagnosis and medication in a timely manner can turn around desperate situations as ADHD is crucifying for education access.

Some forms of child depression and anxiety are context driven by the way the school is operating. There is a cumulative impact. My research showed children as young as 6 have self-esteem issues due to literacy difficulties. Children’s mental health does not happen in isolation. Rapid access pathways need to be developed.

CAMHS needs to be funded properly. If should be centrally funded as part of the NHS. The crisis in CAMHS funding has a direct impact on schools. Access to essential medications and therapies such as ADHD medication can be life changing. To many children have their education blighted by Health service failures.

For typically developing children from non-challenged backgrounds education provides them with an array of qualifications from which they can choose to define their future. For children with literacy difficulties and associated SEND who have insufficient or inappropriate intervention/support many of those options will be closed. They will not have the bouquet of options open to their peers. For children who do get support it still will remain the case the landing strip for a successful post school life may be much narrower than typical peers, and the importance of keeping options open by being able to engage in effective education and engage with a range of qualifications suitable to them which can include a mix of BTEC and GCSE over a protracted time is critical to their long-term outcomes. For these children education has much greater impact for good or ill across their lifespan.

Just because a child with reading and writing difficulties is relatively low profile, does not mean they do not experience any lesser form of disablement, The developmental differences that gave rise to the reading and writing problems also currently impact that child right across their life in school and at home. The impact is the difficult experiences and consequences are not minor, they can be profound and as impactful to those with more visible disability.

I would be happy to discuss the findings of my study and my experiences with the committee as it seeks to improve the situation with SEND pupils.

January 2025

References

Carroll,C., Holden,C. , Kirby,P., Thompson, P., Snowling , M. towards a Consensus of Dyslexia: Findings from a Delphi Study https. ://osf.io/preprints/osf/tb8mp_v1

 

Göransson, K., & Nilholm, C. (2014). Conceptual diversities and empirical shortcomings – a critical analysis of research on inclusive education. European Journal of Special Needs, 29(3), 265 - 280. https://doi.org/10.1080/08856257.2014.933545

 

Thompson, A. (2021). The Illusion of Inclusion: How Parents of Children with Dyslexia Perceive, Understand and Enact Inclusion. Coventry]. Coventry. https://pure.coventry.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/52638948/Thompson2022Phd_Redacted.pdf

See also

Ahad, A., Thompson, A.M., Hall, K.E. (2022) Identifying service users' experience of the education, health and care plan process: A systematic literature review. Review of Education, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.3333

 

Carroll, J., Bradley, L., Crawford, H., Hannant, P., Johnson, H., Thompson, A (2017) SEN support: A rapid evidence assessment. Department for Education. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a822e2c40f0b6230269b43a/DfE_SEN_Support_REA_Report.pdf

 

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