Reform councils to cut SEN spending

Ofsted do look at progress levels for SEN it is part of their remit. True it is not the only measure but there is a tendency to work to the middle. I met an inspector a few years ago who told me that the fall in standards across schools was for the most part was the closing of the special schools and inclusion. We have to have a system which favours the majority and then look at how to cater for those who don’t in. People feel unhappy as it seems minorities are those that are seen as a priority and that goes across the board .

It's unsurprising. The people that voted reform just don't care about other people

And many kids with Sen aren’t school refusers.

Also SEND provision such as EHCP is appealable by tribunal at a national level so naff all Reform-run councils can do about that.

We call it emotionally based school avoidance or anxiety related non-attendance now, not school refusal. The vast majority of students who struggle to attend school have SEND - upwards of 80% are ND. My own autistic teen has an EHCP funding online learning as she can't attend school.

I'm sure the Reform manifesto at the next election will contain many wonderful ideas for education.....

If a certain proportion of the children who no longer receive the required specialist services end up in residential care, that will be way more costly to the taxpayer in the long term. It is cheaper to support parents in caring for their kids in a home setting, plus there are fewer social costs associated with that.

In addition, there would likely be significant disruption in classrooms, as teachers struggle to manage with undiagnosed children who are not getting the targeted help they need. This in turn affects the education of children without special education needs as well. For that reason, you would probably have greater trouble recruiting good teachers willing to teach in Reform councils too.

I too am 'lucky' enough to be in a reform led area. Thankfully dd is now 23 but the fights I had with every aspect of her education, health, wellbeing under the conservatives left me on my final nerve and I virtually had a breakdown. I feel so much for parents of SEN children under Reform councils to get their children's needs met. I once told an Ed psych that his suggestion that my child would eventually fall into an EHCP (so essentially had to fall so behind her peers) was abhorrent and sadly I feel under Reform that this is the future is SEN children.

It makes me sad and furious in equal parts

A lot. Many children who are school refusers have unmet needs. They simply can’t cope in the setting they are in without support.

What has school refusal got to do with SEn?

If they cut it even marginally, small schools will be forced to make TA’s redundant. 1-1 or otherwise. There are talks of pay rises for support staff yet if it’s unfunded we will have to look at redundancy as the budget is so tight.

I meant that school refusal will rise, and be met with a collective shrug.

🤣

Errr how will they not be in school? You get fined for taking a child out on a day trip. How are you going to remove children who simply find some parts of education and the curriculum hard? On what basis?

And the longer you leave SEN the more expensive it is to deal with.

I suspect first on their hitlistbwill be support for children for whom English is not their first language.

That’s not what will happen. The interventions just won’t happen, and either SEN children just won’t be in school or schools will act to remove them -which will be easier if your LA is more supportive of removal. And most parents will be just fine with that.

They'll be in favour of some Nazi scheme no doubt.

Bull shit!

Every child has to reach attainment targets. You don’t get to say to Ofsted “ oh sorry our results are so low and children haven’t met their targets, we were focusing on SEN”

If anything it’s the children with SEN who are sidelined.

The resentment is because SEN has been used by some to explain and justify poor behaviour, bullying and has meant non Sen children are viewed as less of a priority . That has happened n some cases, I am not saying that we don’t need specialist support but this has happened and understandably people feel that isn’t right.

Are they? Last I heard Reform didn’t do so well in a general election. Local elections are very different.

If Reform scale back on SEN provision every parent in the land will be up in arms because ALL children will suffer. Instead of TAs covering interventions teachers will need to do it alongside pitching lessons a lot lower and dealing with the inevitable increase in behaviour problems- alone.
The governments phonic programme will need to stop, high medical needs children won’t be able to go to school and alongside IEP and EHCP provision those kids that need a bit of a boost now and again to reach attainment targets won’t get it. Results will drop across the board, even more teachers will leave and even more young people will be shut out of work.

Not exactly a vote winner.

Well, the electorate is going to give it to you and it almost certainly looks like a scaling back of all of that provision.

I think that is true. There is a huge resentment about sen funding out there. Eve

Plus there has been a steady drip of media about local councils being made bankrupt by sen or social care, with no balance about how central funding from government for local authofies also decreased in real terms by 40% during austerity. Some of the press has been quite manipulative I think.

People can see the services they use crumbling and don't really think beyond that and the paper article saying it's all the fault of fake adhd diagnosis.

That’s the point I am making- people are looking at the ballooning bills for these services and saying they don’t want to pay that much for those services, ergo the services will have to change.

Leaving aside the point that LAs can’t change what they are responsible for or how much the can raise(thanks, Tories!), paying the insane SEN and care bill has reached tipping point where it’s having such an impact on the services provided to taxpayers that they are no longer willing to pay.

The other thing that seems to have been forgotten about is dyslexia and dyspraxia.

Both can come with executive function difficulties that could be seen as adhd but are due to sensory processing / dyslexia. There so much that can be done to support all this in terms of pedagogy. However there’s a one size fits all approach driven by academies these days,

I increasingly feel that diagnoses don’t help as much as identifying the specific real world differences or difficulties the child is having and tailoring everything to meet those needs. Unfortunately everyone and everything else (money, people) seem to only see the way to do this after a diagnosis. (I appreciate that some drug prescriptions require diagnosis first)

Ive taught in send for nearly 20 years. Environmental changes / settings etc across offer the best interventions, medication only seems to help a few really extreme cases.

unfortunately it’s the settings that cost so much and what we are lacking.