SEN funding isn't a bottomless money pit

[Sogfree]

I'll preface this by saying I really enjoy my job working in a SEN school. I care deeply for the children and families I work with.

I've had 4 different conversations this week with parents where they expect an excessive amount of additional resource to be allocated to their child. They expect this as, in their opinion, it's needed. I disagree with 3 of the 4 parents that this is needed.

All 4 of the parents are going to fight the decisions county have made. Their decision to fight will mean county spend more money arguing the challenge.

Services are already broken with the increase in need. Recruitment fails, as there aren't enough speech therapists/OTs/CAMHS practitioners etc to employ.

One parent demanding extra from one of these services means another child gets less.

One parent demanding a child goes to school X at £100k per year when a place at school Y at £30k is going to meet their needs means the child who needs the place at school X doesn't get it, and extra £70k per year is wasted. And the parent keeps their child out of school for 12-18 months whilst they fight for the place at school X.

That's the reality.

Every parent wants the world for their child. I understand that. But taxpayers can't afford to give every child the world.

AIBU - parents know their child best and we should fund what the parents say the child needs

YANBU - there's only so much money to go around and parents need to accept hard decisions have to be made without challenging them

For now ..maybe

I think that’s not quite right: it’s still thinking only within the current system where there is incredibly expensive specialist school or mainstream.

There need to be a far wider variety of schools with different educational approaches, available to ALL children. Some that are similar to current specialist schools (far more than there are given how many children need this but are denied), but also some schools that are focused far more on practical skills/ talents such as music or art or sports alongside core subjects. Some schools that a flexi-schools. Some schools that are highly academic but suitable for children (including many autistic children) who are very intelligent but need a quieter, less disrupted environment with far smaller class sizes. Some schools that are far more child-led and lower demand. Etc. Then the 25-40% of children for whom the current “mainstream” system is appropriate could actually learn properly in that system.

The one-size fits all approach has failed. Schools need to be tailored to the needs of children (instead of expecting to be able to squeeze square pegs into round holes and then pretending to be utterly shocked when this doesn’t work) and develop their talents and cater for different learning styles as well as disabilities. A diverse education sector rather than the current factory farming approach is necessary, and would actually reduce overall cost and help many, many of the children currently being utterly failed by the status quo.

It’s just sad that we have senior people both working within education and Government who seem incapable of recognising this point and see the problem as a dichotomy between “special schools” and “mainstream schools” as they are currently set up, and are determined to double down on the latter because it’s cheaper in the short-term, while wasting a huge amount of our national talent and children’s potential, causing them immense harm and long-term economic cost, and having very poor outcomes for a very large proportion of children, as well as causing immense distress to children with SEND and their families.

There are other ways to do this. The whole system needs overhauling with a far wider choice of schools made available, then there would be far fewer children requiring large amounts of additional support to cope in totally unsuitable environments.

I didn’t say you did say they aren’t beneficial. For some, they are part of a basic education.

You can’t compare DC who are disabled enough that driving lesson have been deemed to be SEP to non-disabled peers. It isn’t comparable at all.

I have already commented on the effect of people using legislation designed for the most complex of learners to obtain expensive and highly personalised provision for learners with moderate needs, and the complex web of case law that has created.

The system needs to be overhauled at statute level.

I think we disagree on what 'reasonable' constitutes in terms of public expenditure.

Some CYP are ao traumatised by the experience they had in schools, that they need very bespoke, interest-led provisions to be able to re-engage. It's easy to guffaw that it's pushy parents rinsing the system, the reality is very different.

DC with EOTAS/EOTIS (with or without the C on the end) have been judged to have needs significant enough that it is inappropriate for provision to be made in a school or college.

Thankfully, it is irrelevant what you think is reasonable. The law deems that, for some, they are reasonably required. Otherwise they wouldn’t be in F.

No. I am absolutely not fine with that either. It's not an either or situation.

No I agree with you - we ended up with a small independent mainstream school because, as a private school, it can provide something different, without being "special". This is what I want for all kids - more flexible approaches to education within existing schools and with different types of school to suit different kids, rather than simply (expensive and often not great) special schools or (inflexible and often not great) mainstream schools.

In an ideal world there would be enough money in the schools budget to pay for all children to have horse riding lessons,sailing lessons,gym membership ect ect .
But there isn't
Where I live there are children waiting years and years ( mine included) ,with EHCPs for provision to be sorted out .
There simply isn't enough money and it's not fair ,for those who have the money to pay for legal advice to get extras,for their child,when other children are out of education receiving nothing .
In my area it's a case of paying for an advocate or solicitor and getting what you want and extras ,as above
Or not having the money for a solicitor and your child is out of education 3/4/5/6 years ..with nothing being offered education wise

Paying for representation isn’t essential.

I have sad repeatedly that the answer is to fundamentally revisit what a mainstream school is, so that children's re not left traumatised by the experience.

The answer is not to leave the mainstreams destroying children and then spending a king's ransom putting them in expensive specials schools and paying for sailing lessons.

The answer is to tackle the issues at source in mainstream schools with early identification and intervention. This will take considerable legislative change, change around Ofsted, the national curriculum and initial teacher training. It will also take financial investment.

The EHCP system is broke and spending a fortune on alternative provision (which is horrifically variable in quality and often nothing more than keeping kids a bit busy) is not the answer. It's a shit sticking plaster.

Local Authorities and teachers have been shown time and time again to be spectacular bad at “discerning levels of need”. The people making these decisions are not doctors and specialists and usually have very little idea what they’re doing. They are also often following illegal procedures designed to circumvent the law to control costs, so are not making objective decisions based on facts and law. That is why tribunals overturn their decisions in almost all cases. The PGCE includes half a day of training on additional needs. Most teachers/ SENCOs know very little at all about this, sadly, only what they’ve “learned on the job” which is usually erroneous and out of date and fed to them by other colleagues who also have little knowledge on the subject. The sheer arrogance of unqualified Local Authority staff who think they are in a better position to judge a child’s needs than the child’s own parent and doctors and specialists (a child these untrained staff have never met) is, frankly, mind boggling.

The very worst thing that could be done is to give these people MORE power when they have been demonstrate unequivocally by the national statistic of them losing 99% of SEND tribunals to be incompetent, immoral and systemically breaking the law and denying children their legal right to education.

Hi, how old is your dd now? I’m going through something similar with my 14yr old dd who hasn’t been in school since October 2023. Really need some support. Sorry to hijack thread.

edited because I missed the word “hasn’t” out!

The answer can't be to build more special schools. The whole concept of a special school is that they should provide something vastly different to a mainstream

Why would building more special schools to reflect the level of need, mean that those schools couldn't provide something different to mainstream settings?

20% of the school population have SEN. This has been a fairly consistent figure for decades. We cannot move towards a position where 20% of the school population are in specialist schools.

Not all children with SEND require a special school, but hypothetically why couldn't 20% of school places be at special schools if that's what is needed? Provision should be based on need. That is one of the underpinning tenets of the legislation and guidelines around SEND.

Ultimately, it sounds very much like having benefitted from the support for your children, you now begrudge others receiving the same or better. What a shame, when so many SEND parents use their experience to support others in the same situation. No doubt you benefitted from support like this too.

Exactly. I spent a year where my son could hardly attend school,the Educational Psychology service was months behind, his plan was months overdue because of this etc was horrific.

The idea that much of the LA's capacity at this time was spent dealing with parents fighting for sailing lessons and horse riding for their previous offspring, whilst my some could not even go to school is simply wrong.

Now he has an EHCP, is in 'the system' and I am someone who is more than capable of playing the system to chase extras for him. But I would not.

It is the educational equivalent of everyone gets a plate before anyone gets extras.

And the law needs to be overhauled to enforce this.

Agree with both of you.

It is difficult in a culture of standards, Ofsted, rankings, etc though.

But a school with a headteacher and governors who have a clear vision for the ethos of the school can really flourish. My personal belief is that the government should interfere as little as possible in such schools, only to the point of investigating any abuse allegations or something, but if the school has decided to work with a modified curriculum or school timetable etc and that's working for the parents and kids, then that should be that.

I think a lot of issues crop up when you say "ah the school can do what it wants but of course it still needs to follow the full national curriculum and everyone needs to learn maths to GCSE and and and..."

To some extent it is in the interests of the system to be inflexible and opaque if it forces expensive children into Home Ed.

Pitting parents against each other doesn’t help. You are focusing on the wrong thing. All DC should have their needs met. All parents should be supported to advocate for their child - including knowing they don’t have to accept LAs unlawfully breaching the EHCP timescales.

Those who have provision for sailing as part of their DC’s EOTAS/EOTIS package can’t attend school either. It has been deemed inappropriate for provision to be made in a school or college.

You want a fifth of children to go to special school? Theat is horrifically exclusionary.

I was gutted that my son was unable to attend our local school, where he would have local friends, a shorter day (he spends an hour a day sat in a taxi), a wider curriculum and not have to deal with he issues to his self image because he goes to 'special school'. He is a bright boy, but people's instant assumption on learning he attends special school is that he has significant congitive disability. He just has really significant autistic traits.I worry how this will impact him when he applies to college or enters the workforce.

Of course I want the mainstream system overhauled so that other children don't have to experience all these negatives just so they can go to school. I want to fix it and save other from this experience!

Special school isn't a prize to be won, and to be honest you can fuck off with your personal insults because I don't agree with you.

That would be lovely, however at this point we should circle back to the OP and the fact that there isn't a bottomless money pit for this.

So what you are saying is because you don’t understand why something is reasonably required your child should be the one who receives what he reasonably requires at the expense of others receiving what they reasonably require.

No, all DC should receive what they require and all parents should be supported to advocate and enforce their DC’ rights.

Yes I think sometimes the parents should pay for some of it

they expect too much

Ofsted is a majority barrier. Their inspection framework places massive kudos on an exclusively academic curriculum, rigid approach and results. Far too little emphasis is on inclusion.

This framework is inevitably what schools are working towards and if we are wanting them to be more inclusive we need to alight Ofsted's priorities with this.

Yes. That is clearly what I said 🙄