SEND - children’s needs to be reassessed from year 6 2029?

You just seem rather focused on if children look disabled or not.

What would the alternative be? If they can't manage in mainstream, they can't manage. Would you want your child to be in the same class as a child who needs 2:1 support and doesn't have it?

No, I didn’t say that.

But we have to move away from providing specialist provision for what are ‘SEMH’ conditions.

Then presumably they just choose the most ideal option.

Nobody has the right to an education that is the best that money can buy and meets their every need and preference.

"I think there needs to be an urgent enquiry into why so many children are ‘dysregulated’ that the only way they can be managed is 2:1."

Lots of adults require 2:1 or higher ratio support including my son. Nothing new there.

The idea that children will fit neatly into one of seven education packages is a weird one. What happens with, say, a child with Down's who is also autistic? How about children with extreme versions of very rare conditions which are not anticipated in any of the packages.

The other major oddity is the fact that, if parents win an appeal against the school the LA has named, the tribunal won't have power to name an alternative: they can only quash the original decision and order the LA to think again, What happens to that child's education in the meantime? What is to stop the LA naming the same school, or type of schooo, again?

Do you think access to special provision should really be based on someone simply looking disabled?

My son is a wheelchair user, he doesn't automatically need to be in special school just because he is visibly disabled. There's multiple examples of 'able bodied' children on this thread who clearly need access to special schools much more than my son.

Where is the space coming from for all these mainstream hubs. I work in a 1 form entry primary school, the hall doubles as a dining room at lunchtime. The original school when built had just 4 classrooms with mixed yr1/2, 3/4 and 5/6 classes. These classrooms were then split in 2 so there are now separate yr group classes. We do not have a library. We already gave 2 prefab buildings in one of the playgrounds used for SEN, 1 of them is a purpose built sensory room. There is no space to put a hub. I imagine we are not unique in that. One of our classes has so many children with need that there are 6 other adults in the class as well as the teacher. Each class has a timetable for the sensory room and other prefab building as they are so small, they can only hold max 6 children.

What do you mean by "able bodied"? Is someone fully able if, for instance, they are unable to get out of their front door, or if they have massive allergies, or if they have something like Tourette's?

There is no doubt that SEND education needs an overhaul. It is naive to think that making the change from y6 to y7 means that there might not be the need for support. I have seen pupils have support in KS3 and then in KS4 it's inexplicably gone. Simply saying we are going to make schools more inclusive does not mean the infrastructure is there. I say this as a teacher of 30 plus years. The money spent on transporting pupils is not sustainable. The explosion of parents (amateur diagnosing) that their child has SEN has probably added to the crisis.

How well would you learn from an online package? It simply does not equate to teaching by an actual person. Plus there's the question of having to have someone around to help them get online and supervise, so that is likely to mean at least one parent being economically unproductive and dependent on benefits.

I’m sorry but I don’t believe an able bodied person of average intelligence is disabled. I just don’t. They may have a personality/mood/MH condition, but they’re not disabled. I think my opinion is far from radical, we’ve become so used to ‘disabled’ meaning anything other than completely 100% healthy and happy that it’s become meaningless. I didn’t say they shouldn’t receive support, just that they’re not ‘disabled’ in a way anyone would recognise.

Why? If they struggle with going into school, they get overwhelmed just by being in the presence of others, and want to do everything in a self lead manner, wouldn’t an online package be the best and most financially viable outcome for everyone?

This. Unless the next government is the Greens (not gonna happen), Labour’s proposals are the best it’ll get. Reform would be brutal, and the Tories not much better. I think they’ll end up in a coalition together.

I think there needs to be an urgent enquiry into why so many children are ‘dysregulated’ that the only way they can be managed is 2:1. There was a special school near our secondary in the early 2000s, all the children were visibly and noticeably disabled (in wheelchairs, Down syndrome, etc). Now the majority are able bodied children. What’s going on? We can’t pretend this isn’t the issue.

This is laughable. There are 28 children in DDs' special school. Not one of them would meet those criteria. They have a young person who needs 2:1 provision at all times and still causes chaos on a daily basis when they get dysregulated. Other young people who need careful management. Some students need to be kept away from each other. Some students need lunch time meds. Every teacher turns their class around between students - some need soft seating and music, others need dim lighting, etc. DD3 finds overhead lighting stressful so her English teacher bought a book light and they sit with the lights off and read or do exam practice.

In DD1's special school, only a handful of the children would have been classed as SLD or PMLD. The majority would have been MLD. Do you want your mainstream classrooms flooded with children who have moderate learning disabilities? Because I can tell you that 'moderate' is pretty hard to manage day to day.

Yes, I imagine if Reform get in, no one will have to worry about their EHCP being reassessed because they’ll probably just be scrapped. Their policy focuses on reducing unnecessary (their words) EHCPs for overdiagnosed things like ADHD (again, their words), and to stop parents abusing the system (also their words).

If the Tories get in - will they make a change on day 1 to remove this new policy?

So I’m not sure banking on a GE is the answer.

EOTAS doesn't mean home school. It simply means education outside of school. DDs 2&3 have what is probably the closest thing to EOTAS that isn't EOTAS in their school provision. They technically go to school, and they go to the same school, but their provision looks very different to each other.

DD2 can't cope with taxi transport and can't cope with full time provision. She is picked up by school staff, taken to an activity, then dropped home by school staff. She's rarely on school site. The goal for her, right now, is to build her tolerance to be out of the house and doing stuff. It doesn't sound very 'education' like, but it is the key to unlocking a future for her. Until she can cope with leaving the house and interacting with other people for a few hours each day without burning out, it doesn't matter what she's trying to learn. She's had this struggle since age 4 and is now 18. This is the first time a school has tried to work on the core problem.

DD3 is at the same school. She gets a taxi to/from school. She's doing maths and English GCSEs (already has her Functional Skills 2). She is largely on site except for when she goes sea glass hunting or to the allotment for movement breaks. She's going to be having some trauma therapy which hopefully will mean that in 2027 she'll feel able to go to a college.

I'm just coming back to this. It's outrageous. Ofsted roundly criticise schools that narrow their curriculum too early. It is part of the reason that many state schools have opted to restrict GCSEs to 8 subjects (9/10 GCSEs depending on whether a child can cope with accelerated teaching in science and mathematics). But you think that pupils with SEN can just be given a 'basic online package that they can self-teach and take it or leave it'?

"Have you even read the link? It doesn’t cover education. It says “Council spending on education services has been excluded.”

Yes no evidence in there.

Sorry, I was more meaning about the hubs rather than you personally. I get it because of course a large amount of children with EHCP's DO have autism and/or ADHD but there doesn't seem to be much thought for the NT children capable of mainstream with EHCP's and taking away their EHCP and thinking it will work simply because these hubs will exist isn't going to end well.

As far as I'm aware, parents are going to have less say now.

Oh yes, I realise that not everyone with EHCP’s have autism or ADHD, I just used those as the most obvious example of specific needs that could be better catered to in mainstream, rather than parents having to take their children out of mainstream because they’re being let down, which seems to be happening more frequently these days if threads on here are to be believed.

I would hope these things could be assessed on a case by case basis. I think I saw somewhere about it being more parent led? Perhaps I’m mistaken.

I definitely plan to raise concerns with my MP.

I think the hub, if done correctly which I have my doubts, could be a good option to keep children capable of mainstream in mainstream if that is in their best interests.

But not all children with EHCP's have Autism or ADHD which seems to be largely what the hubs will be catered towards. There doesn't seem to be any thought for the children who are disabled enough to have EHCP's but are also NT like my son.

He'd be miserable in a separate area away from his friends and it also wouldn't be appropriate for his needs.