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

[missbish]

Are they taking the piss? After the struggles parents have trying to secure support for their child, they’re then going to threaten to take it away once they’re due to go to secondary? Ds goes to secondary this year so I don’t think it will effect him but I am so angry for those it does effect.

That's called spin.

If the government want individual teachers to teach classes of 30 including very high need children on their own, they need to relax the pressures on mainstream classes-curriculum, testing and Ofsted, otherwise those teachers will just break.

Perhaps you missed the post where I said “If you take the government at their word (yes, I know!) then they say they will be spending more. Reality may be very different, of course, but that isn’t what I commented on. I commented on what the government has said since we were discussing the publications released today.” Or maybe you just ignored it. I know reality is often different to what is said. My point was about what had been said.

https://apple.news/AY7tC8siwRHO32k0TYUYoTQ for anyone wondering where this leaves their children, this article explains four scenarios

Taking parents to tribunal is costly, and most of the time the LA does it to either hope parents wont fight or to delay.

I do agree that some APs and some independent provisions need to be tighter controlled regarding cost and making sure they are supplying what they should.

But I do feel this is kicking the can further down the street, and if people are up in arms regarding there non sen children being disrupted by sen children this is going to get worse.
And the inclusion the government is wanting will not be inclusive for any child.

Plus it's completely irrelevant. Port Talbot is in wales who have their own legislation around send and education. The white paper applies to England.

Must admit, I'm at a bit of a loss. EHCPs were introduced in 2014, at the same time as the SEN Code of Practice. Both were designed to meet the needs of austerity.

I do not understand why parents keep arguing for an austerity approach to education. And this isn't spin. You can look up the dates.

https://www.local.gov.uk/about/campaigns/save-local-services/save-local-services-how-ps1-council-funding-spent

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

I asked pretty much the same question in another thread yesterday but they couldn't answer. Only to say adults pay towards their social care costs, but that's not always the case and actually those with the most significant needs are unlikely to pay anything at all because they have limited income. ASC costs are also a huge expense to the taxpayer. I think OP just has a gear to grind against those with invisible disabilities because they don't believe they're real disabilities. Hence all the comments about poor boundaries etc.

DD1 got her EHCP for her brain malformation and learning disability. Her geneticist is convinced she has a genetic syndrome but despite being in the DDD study and 100,000 genomes study, they haven't found it.

She wasn't diagnosed with ASD until 15, 11 years after starting special school.

Precisely. The “boundaries” talk is usually a tell tale sign that someone either doesn’t have a clue, or is just outright not interested in learning.

I taught for 5 years, in specialist provision. Following that I now have over a decade of experience in staffing and training for specialist provision. I am qualified in de-escalation, positive handling/restraint, and augmented communication. I have written EHCPs, sat on SENd and Inclusion panels, worked with PEX and attendance at LA level. I’m not sure how much more qualified I have to be for the disabled child that lives in my house.

That training isn’t always helpful. There are still days I look at him and I’m absolutely stumped. I can tell you, for an actual fact, that traditional behaviour management does not work for him or children like him. I know, because I’ve tried, and learned.

I agree with you, that poster has come across very badly and true colours have shown with the comments

Parents are scared. They have vulnerable children and have fought hard to get support in place . Then reforms come in which might take away that support or take away the mechanisms they use to enforce that support. Its fear.

I think the current system is crap and could be improved- i even believe that costs could be stabilised and improvements be made with good reforms.

But i am still scared that if changes arent thought through carefully all that will happen is poorly supported chikdren with no reduced cost.

For instance the remaining ehcp students are proposed to fit into some specialist provision packages that are pre-determined. The proposal suggest these neat categories 5 or so of them. one talks about externalised behaviour and one about internalised behaviour, one about adapted curriculum, one about comms - but the children at my sons special school need 3 of those categories. They might shut down, they might lash out, they might self harm, they need a different curriculum, they need therapies listed in one of the other profiles. Im not sure why they think complex sen is so neat.

👏 @Playingvideogameswould be interested in your response to this poster, someone with a hell of a lot more experience (professional and personal) than you

I can’t find the original comment just those who have quoted it but I wanted to touche base on the post surrounding the cost and how people don’t begrudge the cost for severely disabled people but those who are clearly academic getting a 53 k a year education.

my daughter is one that currently costs 73k a year for her to attend school.

she missed 75 percent of primary school due to ill health. She attends school with lines and tubes - Cerebral palsy, autism, and Mutiple organ issues.
she went to a mainstream primary when she was able to attend and others access work she could do from home. If you walked past her in the street you would never know she was any “ different “
when in mainstream school she never learned to write not because she wasn’t capable but because she couldn’t access English work because she couldn’t have a scribe or a laptop - or someone to teach her touch typing. Her reading level in year 4 was reception level because she couldn’t do Phonocs due to her CP effecting speech and the sounds not being correct.
in year 5 and year 6 she finally got a 1-1 just for her and was able to access these things. She went from the above to finishing her Sats at 107, 99 and 98 despite all the work she missed. By the time she started secondary school she could read fluently, maths was mildly behind to average.
she couldn’t get in to any mainstream school “ couldn’t meet need”
the Sen schools were either SEMH etc or the one we thought she would go to which is more for children with her needs couldn’t take her because her academics meant she didn’t match the cohort and she would Have purposely be left behind because she was more academic than the cohort.

the only school in a 25 mile radius that said yes was a academicall able independent Sen school in which she started at and is now in an environment where she is writing news articles, stories, coming second in her maths exams … so this in turn means she will likely get her GCSEs and go on to further education and make something of her life and contribute as an adult.

Two of mine are able bodied and of at least average intelligence and go to independent special school costing way in excess of £50,000. For good reasons, without tribunal.

That’s fine. Again, doesn’t change the financials.

It doesn't help anyone to say things that are untrue. Two of mine attend schools like this and did not need tribunal to get it. However, they both had a raft of robust reports that showed they wouldn't cope in any other type of provision.

SEN spending is also funded centrally. The council tax payers only fund SEN, when the council spends more on SEN, than the SEN grant from the government. Where is the Welsh equivalent of the DfE high needs funding block, which should be shown in the income section of the Neath Port Talbot accounts?

According to this

https://www.gov.wales/budgeted-expenditure-special-educational-needs-sen-and-additional-learning-needs-aln-provision-april-2025-to-march-2026-html

Average spending per ALN pupil in Wales for the year was budgeted to £1,486 - not a huge amount.

I looked at another LA in England. The high needs funding grant from the DfE was £215 million, then £19 million was netted off for academies. The shortfall on SEN expenditure was £51 million, but with a county population of 1.2 million, that works out as £42.5 per person for the year. I’d have to go through 10 borough councils’ websites to find out how many council tax payers there are, which I am not going to waste my time on. However, our council tax this year for two of us is £3,380 (and we live in an average house for this town) - an extra £104 pa on SEN spending is immaterial!

Total budgeted spending on services for 2026/7 is £1.2 billion - £51 million overspending on SEN is 4.25% of total spending!

You need to look at the actual SEN grant versus SEN expenditure for Neath Port Talbot council, not a Mickey Mouse breakdown.

Yes we didn’t have to go tribunal to get independent Sen school but the LA knew there was no place for her anywhere else.

We’re not talking about overspending, we’re talking about total spending as a % of council tax take. Stop fiddling the numbers.

@BlueandWhitePorcelain

Don’t be coming on here with your factual information. There’s a devolved, and completely irrelevant to today’s conversation, LA that is spending… an amount… of money that is presumably paid by all council tax payers, including those with SENd children.

That’s the point: if a LA school can meet need and has a place, parents don’t just get to say “oh actually I’d prefer the indie specialist up the road that costs more than Eton, please”. If the LA provision can’t meet need and/or doesn’t have a place, parents typically still need to go to a Tribunal to get the indie specialist.

Fwiw my DS9 was also offered a place at specialist without Tribunal, but he’d been hoofed out of two mainstream LA schools (that could supposedly meet his needs) before he’d even finished Y1 so they took the path of least resistance. He is thriving now and working in greater depth across the whole curriculum, despite missing so many months of education.

This!!