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

My child has attended his current school since he was 3 and it would be a last resort that I'd agree to move him, even if they had sort of in between SEN schools which would be appropriate for his educational needs.

MS with extra support can absolutely work for some children and it currently works well for my son. He has 2:1 TA support which means he isn't taking away extra time from the main teacher.

The cost of independent Sen schools is sortable though which is the same as local authority maintained schools.
we are in London and we have a group of indenpendent Sen schools which are 50-60k a year in total no where near the level of some of the suggestions on here
this includes everything like SLT and OT etc

My SEN child behaves better in his mainstream class than half of the non-SEN kids. He likes to follow rules.

Your post is a load of nonsense. I’m really disgusted at the comments in this thread - particularly from “professionals”.

I agree OP. My child has an EHCP. I have honestly had people say I’m ‘lucky’. Lucky that my DC is academically five years behind peers in certain subjects and can’t concentrate for longer than five seconds. So we get our choice of secondaries? I’d trade it all for her to be able to learn and maybe live independently one day.

And that's why send funding exists. If they need additional time and attention a TA can be funded to provide it. It's probably cheaper than full on specialist provision too.

Here’s the issue though the reason parents are seeking “ expensive “ specialist schools is because this does not for a lot of them happen even if it is in their ehcp !

I voted YABU, but I think the real answer lies in the middle.

It bothers me that parents of SEN children have to act as vigilant advocates for their children. Not every parent is in the same position due to personal experience, education, finances, or time constraints. Yet all of us are forced to become experts in our child’s conditions because no one else can do the job.

Sometimes a parent may miss the mark with a request, but as a parent I find myself trying very hard to work with the school to make our requests as easy on staff and resources as possible. I know from experience we are much more likely to get day to day adherence if the plan is not viewed as a burden.

the rare times we get forceful in our advocacy, it is because someone has done something truly egregious or dangerous.

My SEN child is also a rule follower. It is the normal students who chat and can’t seem to behave like adults at a critical business meeting or maybe going to court that drive her crazy and distract her from learning. They also learn too slowly and frustrate her because the class spends too long on each subject.

not every SEN child is the same.

Nope. This is exactly in line with the experience of parents up and down the country as the tribunal statistics show, alongside scathing comments made by many, many tribunal judges about the egregious and deliberate unlawful behaviour of incompetent, ignorant and unscrupulous Local Authority staff.

As a teacher though, that's not really how teaching works. I'm reminded of that marketing truism that 80% of sales come from 20% of clients.

Some students dominate a room and others don't. That isn't necessarily to do with SEN. It's the teacher's job to manage that. You can get students who are ill matched to the course, school or peer group for all sorts of reasons.

Having said that, persistent absence is a big issue and that does have a correlation with SEND.

@Findra do you feel the same way about all students or just those with SEN. What about those with EAL, the child who is a young carer, the child who is recently bereaved, the child whose parent is deployed oversees and needs a bit more reassurance, the child who has asthma, the child who has broken their arm at lunchtime, the child who is a looked after child…

Why don’t you campaign for that then rather than slinging mud at disabled children and their parents and moaning about how you think it’s “not fair” that disabled children sometimes - after a legal battle of several years - are given sufficient provision to be able to have an education.

No, it didn’t. Many children didn’t get a proper education at all, or vastly underachieved due to a lack of appropriate provision, or were left traumatised.

Agreed, there are some appalling comments here and it’s quite clear that a number of people writing them who work in the education sector should be nowhere near vulnerable minors.

I totally agree. My dyslexic son has had to endure class after class of other non-SEN kids disrupting teaching. Really really annoys me.

It's not as simple as that. Some children can do well in mainstream without any support, some can thrive in mainstream with some support and some cannot thrive in mainstream no matter how much support you give them, it's not the right setting for them.
And the reality is that 30 children is too many for 1 teacher, regardless of SEN, children's needs vary widely, there are ability variations and some are a year older than others.
As others have said, with some changes such as smaller class sizes, some children wouldn't need as much support as their needs would be met better through the universal provision. Parents pay for private to get smaller class sizes, not usually because their child has SEN, but because this gives a better educational opportunity.
I don't have SEN but learnt very little at secondary as the behaviour of other children was terrible and the teacher spent most of their time in crowd control. But I had supportive parents and the ambition to do better ahd taight myself the curriculum from study guides, but without that I wouldnt have acheived as much as I did, I was academically able but still let down by my school.
The current expectations on both teachers and children are unhelpful and unrealistic, and if they were more emotionally supportive I think fewer people would be seeking Ehcps as need would be met already

What an incredibly ignorant generalisation.

Horse riding for core stability. Pffft!
what's wrong with sit ups?

what is causing all these mental health problems in kids today? (please dont say covid). How much of this is down to parenting, and parental actions-broken homes, so-called blended families, plonking babies and toddlers in front of screens, long hours in childcare, mothers and fathers smoking weed before and during pregnancy, over-protecting kids and not building independence nd reslience for starters

Daughter does 1 hour a week horse riding
1 hour a week swimming
then an extra 2 hours a week funding ( 20.00 an hour ) of activity budget usually build this up on the money and go somewhere like Legoland. It’s not the education department but still the local authority who fund it.

Your ignorance is astounding.

Please do enlighten me!

Parents are having to work much more and not have as much input raising there own children of course it has an impact on mental health some children feel incredibly disconnected from family they don't see them day to day week to week and when they do they end up on guilt trip outings where they "need" to have fun because it's costing mum and dad money

Some children won't be physically capable of doing sit ups due to their disability. My child does hydrotherapy on top of physio because physio alone isn't often enough to develop things such as core strength and stability and he isn't able to do sit ups.

It's also easier for children to do things such as swimming, horse riding etc and not know that they are 'working' too. Some children can find physio to be difficult and dull even though physios do their best to make it as fun as possible.

"Horse riding for core stability. Pffft!
what's wrong with sit ups?"

Because due to their disability, they cannot do them.