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

I had a good look at my LA’s accounts, budget and SEND strategy for this thread. By their own admission, they are short of 350 special school places; and it’s their long term strategy to create 1,150 more special school places. It’s no wonder the SEN transport expenditure is so high, when the ideology of inclusion (propagated imo by people with no conception of the reality of learning disabilities) has stopped LAs from building more local special schools.

Many posters also do not seem to realise that there are non maintained specialist schools, run by charities. They charge LAs for just the costs. There is no profit in a charity. I knew of one, where the organisation agreed to put more of its own money into the school, running below capacity (and therefore making a loss), because they recognised the good work, it was doing.

I wish the gov would actually listen to parents of children with SEN or at least listen to the teachers that have all ready done there best to give there all to a lot of sen children!
Who are going to be the ones to implement all this!
A lot of teachers are barely getting by now! They are having to pay for equipment out of there own money!
There mental health are under strain, a lot of schools have no TA in upper primary classes as it is now.
So the little money they will be getting will be to employ one extra TA (if that) that will do absolutely nothing in terms of the help they are going to need!

All children will suffer, and a lot of staff will not want to work there! That is not being horrible (as my child has significant sen) it is being realistic!

We need more sen schools that are maintained by the gov and not independent!
A lot of money is in the private sector! A lot of money is thrown away at tribunal!
The government/LA is putting money in the wrongs things and then blaming the sen children!

Misread!

It just means he went to an in-person tuition college.

Brick sixth form, as opposed to online sixth form, is how I read it. Brick as in a building!

Appreciate it’s not the point of your post and a bit of a derail
but
you get Redbrick Unis
but not brick sixth forms or was that a typo ?

DS2 already had an ECHP but had a bespoke package for internet school where I was unpaid LSA. The structure at mainstream could not support his needs as high capability but low achieving due to ASD/ADHD. Specialist school would have been inappropriate. He ended up with 11 GCSESs and then went to brick 6th form with his EHCP and got two A stars and one A for maths, physics and futher maths and is now studying for MEng at local uni. We wouldn’t be where we are now without the existing structure - it’s imperfect but we had to use it and the legal fallbacks it provides. Without these, DS2 would undoubtedly not where he is today with a chance of becoming one of the minority of people with his needs with a real chance of employment as an adult in employment - but more than that achieving a high paying role in line with his abilities.

I think it's a good idea. However currently LAs use every review (when they can be bothered to do them) to remove support for no reason and with no evidence, pushing parents to sit in a lengthy tribunal process to get it back and this can happen repeatedly. So people are rightly and understandably concerned about how it will work in practice.

My son had an SEN teacher. He's 37 now so this was a long time ago.
When he went to secondary school he got no help. Every time I tried to get things in place it was like talking to a brick wall. I was then told son had to ask in class for help . As if !
He left school with no qualifications but did well in art college. He's now doing a degree in his own time. He's a clever lad but lacks confidence in his abilities

I've started to notice this too. op claims there's no beef with those with asd/adhd but it drips from every post they dislike those who are likely falling into the invisible disabilities category.

Apologies, your post didn’t clarify you were only discussing those without SEN when you wrote the paragraph I quoted, so I didn’t know you were excluding DC with SEN from that paragraph. DS3 does have SEN.

Is he in the group who are NT with no disabilities or SEN though which was the group under discussion? This was the context in which that point was made - that children who arent sen, arent in inadequate schools and arent low attainers are generally getting a good education which is more or less designed around them.

Ive never heard of a child without sen or disability getting eotis?

Thinking logically, good assessments are hard to come by in the first place. Many applications are turned down and have to be appealed. Then, if provision is put in place and is effective, the child's needs can appear lower simply because their needs are being met. If the EHCP is removed, and therefore the provision that goes with it, that means that the whole process has to start again when the child deteriorates, as they are likely to. This time, however, there will be no route for EHCP unless the child is deemed 'complex'.

Now, if schools were effective at identifying who was complex, the system which is moving to a school led model might be useful. But most schools are fed a narrative that almost nobody qualifies for support, and they pass that on to parents. For example, in DD2's case, the SENDCO completely refused to assist me with a request for assessment. Bear in mind that the current criteria is 'has or may have SEN, and may need provision from a plan.' She has a diagnosis of ASD, so definitely did have SEN. She was working at level 1 in GCSE English in year 10, so definitely needed something and the criteria for assessment is 'may need provision from an EHC plan.' When I said that I would do a SAR and submit my own request, and did so, not only was my application accepted immediately by the LA, but they decided that only an independent special school, then EOTAS, then another independent special school, could meet needs. There was no question that she should be in mainstream education.

That is the problem. SENDCOs don't actually have to start working towards the qualification until year 3 of being in the job, and most have jacked it in by then because they are expected to also hold down teaching responsibilities. DD2's SENDCO had a 50% teaching timetable, was expected to support other schools with their SEN workload and was expected to run the SEN hub in our school as well as managing all the SEN plans at SA and SA+, plus EHCPs. We can't trust a system where people with very little training to hold responsibility for assessing whether our children need support, especially when that support will increase their workload.

Yes they should be but I’m not convinced they always are

EHCPs are already reviewed annually.

Presumably it’s because the process is arduous and parents have been through it and the thought of losing that and having to go through it again is not welcome.

It’s understandable.

Yes that is why EHCP is helpful as hopefully it is regularly reviewed

I am unsure why you're upset by this. My daughters needs from early primary to secondary changed dramatically. In early years she was able to mask. Pre-puberty changed that and her emotional outbursts were more severe so required adjusted support.
She's older now, so again, the school has changed support required.

Surely its a good thing for needs to be reassessed rather than sticking a label on for life and thinking 'Job Done'

My son is non verbal for huge amounts of time when anxious. He’s doing a degree and on target for a first.

Absolutely!

My brother has his own tech company. He claims 4 out of 5 of his employees are ASD. As a group, they do extremely well earnings wise, but a lot of them struggle with relationships - so most are divorced, multiple partners etc. - and often SEND children with difficulties.
It really would be better to train all people with ASD in social skills from an early age, I would like to believe it is possible. I know these are cliches, but for personal happiness, humans are not just economic numbers to pump, they get one life and need to have personal fulfilment. There is something about our education system that fails to let most kids flourish and I find that extremely depressing. I think the idea of mental health, self fulfilment, happiness is more common in some other countries in the education system.

And to be clear I mean adjustments that go way beyond what most companies could provide, and for staff with high needs.

Edited as posted accidentally too soon!

How typical is this would you say? Not impossible of course but there’s a reason it made the news

Typical? That ASD is very well represented in the highly academic and professional engineering, science, IT, design and maths sectors, yes it is.

Anecdotal, but I have a friend of many years in HR at several prominent engineering firms. They are extremely adept at adjustments to help staff with ASD work and thrive, right up to most senior levels. For very good reason, because their international success in the sector depends on those people.

Every word of this.

Meet Jason Arday, Cambridge University's youngest ever Black professor, who didn't speak until he was 11. - CBS News

Sigh.

DS1 is autistic but extremely bright and earning hundreds of thousands per year in tech in a foreign country and not yet 25 years old. At primary, he was bored out of his mind but because he was always intense and quirky they let him get on with his own work quietly, with ear defenders on.

No such look for my other 3 NT DC. They were positively expected to help others and the teachers out, especially the girls. Always sat next to the boys with focus and behaviour issues to “set an example”. I can only assume that that is even more widespread now. The most troubling part was always that the state primary teachers who seemed the best at bringing out the lower achievers and milder SEND were always the worst culprits at sitting my DDs next to these kids. Thankfully we have access to grammar schools where they eventually got to learn at their own pace.