Independent SEN schools can be misleading in what actual provision they give and what the outcomes are for children. Money could be better spent in mainstream with better and neutral oversight.
DD1 went a specialist speech and language school, which was in the top 5% of all schools for value added! The children did SATs and GCSEs. The school was inspected by Ofsted and CSCI, as it was then. The school did a range of standard assessments on DD1 like CELF for the annual review, to see what progress she had made. The LA’s specialist Ed psy used to come to DD1’s annual reviews. What more neutral oversight does the average mainstream school get?
We knew exactly what input DD1 was getting. We could go and talk to her speech and language therapist on a Friday afternoon, when we went to pick her up, whenever we wanted. One term, there was the annual review, and the other two terms, there were was a parent teacher consultation with the teacher and several of the subject teachers, one of the class TAs, where we could look at all her exercise books and art work, etc beforehand. We also had a conversation with her OT after it.
It might be your opinion, that money could be spent better in mainstream schools, but the fact is there are some children like DD1, who needed signing, visual support, and symbols to aid comprehension. In a mainstream school, she couldn't understand what the teacher was saying, couldn't read the material and didn't understand what she was supposed to to be doing, despite being a bright child - as were the vast majority of children in her school. It is ludicrous to suggest that children, who need to be in special/specialist schools, especially those with low incidence disorders could cope in mainstream, when the whole environment is wrong for them! How many ordinary class teachers can sign?
Eventually speech and language schools couldn't meet her medical needs. If they could not with a class of ten, a teacher, 2 class TAs, a FT class speech and language therapist and an on-site nurse all waking hours, then how on earth would a mainstream school cope with a child, who needed 999 up to three times a week? I can tell you from personal experience of watching other people, that the staff would have panicked.
She had to go to another specialist school, where they monitored the cognitive performance of the students continuously. If they had noticed DD1’s cognitive performance going down, over 6 weeks, they’d have done an EEG on-site and made an appointment for her with her on-site consultant. Children get sent to these schools, because in the end, its cheaper to have the on-site medical centre deal with most of the emergencies, than have the fragmented NHS dealing with it all!
How many mainstream schools monitor cognitive performance in children, with progressive deteriorating medical conditions (including side effects of aggression, irritability and challenging behaviour) and attempt to change their medical treatment. If you are wondering why bother - because the social care for the adults is so much harder and more expensive, the worse their behaviour gets.
I know someone who had to go to tribunal for the same school. The parents were able to prove to the tribunal, the school with a boarding placement Monday to Friday, plus a quote from his taxi company (to bring him home on a Friday and take him back on a Sunday night) was cheaper than the LA’s proposed SLD school (which was unsuitable for him anyway, as he was MLD), plus the cost of the social care package (£45,000 pa at that time) and the daily taxi. The hearing didn't even start, as the chair awarded the parents the specialist school placement, on the grounds of the most efficient use of resources! This didn't even take into account the extra costs to the NHS of the LA’s school.
School placements like this are either joint funded by education and social services, as DD1’s was, so her social worker was also monitoring the placement by looking round and attending most of the meetings. Some children had tripartite funding from education, social services and the NHS - to reflect the costs to each, of the child having care in their local community instead, including the NHS.
The cost to the NHS of an ambulance plus a bed for the night, which DD1 usually had is £722 a time - so up to three times a week is £2,166 before any education.