New head wanting to move away from good SEN reputation

[yoshiblue]

We are currently looking at a number of secondary schools for my DS in Year 5 and has ADHD. One of our options is a non selective secondary who recently has had a new head.

I’ve heard through the grapevine that the head is trying to move the school away from having a reputation for SEN and attracting EHCP pupils.

For those who work in education, I’m keen to understand the reasons for this. It’s my assumption it’s probably to do with lack of money/resources to support these children? Maybe even an EHCP doesn’t bring the actual money it should to support a child? Is it down to pressure for results too? I know the school has joined a MAT a couple of years ago.

My son generally has low level SEN needs but obviously want him to be understood and supported. Sadly where we live, there are a lot of grammar schools and the other catchment comprehensive isn’t great so it is one of our main options.

Advice most appreciated.

It's the resource side of it.

Where I work has a reputation for being good wirh SEN but the extra pressure this puts on teaching staff is high. Extra resources, different coloured paper, preparing individual tasks, individual timetables etc.

Parents sometimes have unrealistic expectations of what one class teacher is capable of doing to support their child.

The EHCP rarely brings enough funding, even if it does we struggle to recruit 1:1s.

I'm sorry OP, the whole system is failing children with SEN. Inclusion isn't working because it isn't funded.

For those who work in education, I’m keen to understand the reasons for this. It’s my assumption it’s probably to do with lack of money/resources to support these children? Maybe even an EHCP doesn’t bring the actual money it should to support a child? Is it down to pressure for results too?

Yes, all of those things.

Children who need an EHCP, aren’t getting them awarded.

Children with EHCPs aren’t getting sufficient funding awarded by the LEA.

Schools are expected to fund up to £6000 for every child on the SEN budget but this amount isn’t ring-fenced and isn’t actually connected to how many children with SEN there actually are in the school. We had 5 new pupils with SEN join us from a neighbouring school last June/July because they’d ‘heard’ we were good with additional needs. We don’t get any extra funding when they all join us, and the old school doesn’t lose any! The impact on the new school can be immense though.

TAs are paid peanuts and are leaving left right and centre because they don’t want to be hit/kicked/bitten or spend all day changing nappies.

If you have a class of 32 where 8 have SEN 30 and 3 are in nappies, 1 with a hoist and 1 needing their bloody sugars tested regularly, you are expected to get the same results as a teacher with a class of 30 with no SEN and a full time TA. It’s hardly surprising that cash-strapped schools wish they didn’t have a reputation for being amazing with high need pupils.

You've pretty much nailed it to be fair. A school gets a reputation as being good with Send children, parents of those children then opt to send them there because obviously you want your child to be well understood and supported, invariably the support and funding doesn't follow so you end up with Sen children not getting the support they need and deserve and the remainder of the class also not getting the education they should be because staff are diverted away to deal with different issues that have arisen.

I read so many posts of MN saying people hate disabled people or parents saying that they're struggling to get the correct provision for their child and I wish people would understand it's not a case of one vs the other. It's a situation of drastic underfunding and constantly moving goal posts that the government are happy to turn a blind eye to because it's not their kids fighting over the scraps of an education system.

Inclusion doesn't just mean putting all children together and watching how well it all works out. It means providing the appropriate resources and support to create a system in which ALL children are catered for - and that is not happening at all at present because there's apparently no money!

It’s also to do with children with SEND who may not achieve the level of GCSE grade that is going to improve the school’s data and therefore reputation.

I was a SENCo in a school with a very high number of children with EHCPs, including a resourced provision where all the pupils had an EHCP. The head tried very hard to avoid the school being named, but it was named by parents because we did a good job. It didn’t matter to me whether those children scored highly in exams. What mattered to me was they they made the best of themselves, made progress, achieved what they could and were happy in school.

Its a numbers game though.

Thanks all, so as I suspected to do with lack of funding. As a governor of a primary school this doesn't surprise me!

At least we can view schools knowing what to expect.

I used to go to a toddler group with a mum who was a teacher at the local secondary. She said that a teacher from a different Comp in the area used to say to any parents who asked about SEN at open evenings that toddler mum's school was better for SEN than theirs was. In other words they tried to put off parents of kids with SEN applying and direct them elsewhere.

It's partly the lack of funding, but also the skewing of the school's population. All comprehensive schools expect to have a percentage of SEND/SEMH students, but when parents share information online about how great their school is at catering for a particular group, families inevitably do what they can to benefit from that information. I'm a governor of a school with a good reputation for SEMH/SEND and we are seeing our staff become overwhelmed. As well as EHCP's and the normal admissions, we get many appeals from families convinced that our school is the only one that can cater for their child's needs. We have toned down the information on our website about these provisions, and staff are now discouraged from over-promoting the school's strength at open evenings. After all, the reputation is only as strong as the team of special people who deliver SEMH/SEND provision and, if they beome overwhelmed and leave the school, the reputation might evaporate quickly.

Thanks all, it's very logical when you've all spelt it out.

There's a logistical issue, too. If you have a number of children with an EHCP and have managed to recruit enough TAs to support them, you have to actually fit those TAs in the classroom.
Then there's the staffing issue - as well as recruiting the TAs, you have to manage them, deal with their sickness absence, personality issues between them and so on.
A neighbour's daughter started teaching recently. She has 30 in her Yr2 class, 2 regular TAs and up to three others providing 1:1 support. She's in her early 20s. The youngest of the TAs is mid-40s, all of them have been there years and a couple apparently have very set views on how things should be done & that sort of thing. She's had more issues with the TAs than she has had with the children!

Because some mainstream schools have become “unofficial special schools”. It becomes a cycle and they do not have space for all the staff, funds or resources.

Some schools would prefer not to have pupils with SEN, especially ADHD & SEMH as they can often bring challenging behaviour. Too many of those pupils can cause mayhem quite frankly. I used to teach for context.

Im going to be totally honest here (and I’m fully expecting to get flamed).

As a mum of a child without SEN, I wouldn’t want them to go to a school that had a great reputation for SEN. I would worry that all the teachers and TA’s resources and time would go to the kids with additional needs and my son wouldn’t get the education he could elsewhere.

Perhaps the new head is worried that the school is becoming too skewed towards SEN and there are too few applications coming in from students without additional needs?

@Seagrassbasket

I didn’t pick the school that was “great for SEN” either. I picked the one that had a reputation for not being very inclusive. Suits my academic son down to the ground.

This is it in a nutshell.

You made a rational choice. Schools are under pressure to "narrow the gap" between SEN/PP children and non-SEN/PP children. Unfortunately that isn't compatible with encouraging high-flyers to fly higher.

Ds old school actually closed down their SEN unit where pupils could learn in small groups & children with ASD & ADHD could go if they were overwhelmed in normal classes. One of my friend's ds was in the unit & when it closed was told by school to not send him to school after the unit closed. He missed a whole year of secondary school until a place came up in an SEN school. SEN provision is hit & miss, the government & Ofsted expect the kids to manage in mainstream schools with very little support & don't care & won't fund the specialist provisions unless they are forced to by tribunals which most parents can't afford the legal services to go through with.

Budget, impact on scores, disruption to class, additional work required.

My ds junior school (y3-y6) has no class ta anymore. It's one teacher and 30 kids so if there are any funded 1;1 they often get 'used' for general class support and have to support those who don't have funding but need it plus the child they are paid to support.

@Seagrassbasket

Me too if I'm honest. We chose an ofsted good vs ofsted outstanding for this reason. The second one had a much much higher than national average % of children with SEN . It's an uncomfortable truth but inclusion isn't helping anyone's children and I'm not prepared to have my children's education suffer due to people who think all children should be educated together

I appreciate peoples' honesty and don't blame you one bit for choosing schools with lower SEN pupils.

My son is both ADHD and very academic, not what many of you may think of when imagining an ADHD child. So I am looking for both a school which will academically stretch him but also understand his quirks. Urrgghh!

@yoshiblue its a huge issue nationally sadly. It is resources and results - but also the brutal march of academies. I work in SEN and generally the academies are by far the worst at accommodating SEN needs. It’s a pretty grim picture. Good luck with your search x

@Seagrassbasket @Tribevibes completely agree. Our primary school has developed a " best in the area for SEN" reputation over the years we've been there and it's now slowly strangling it. No extra funding and class sizes are actually falling because non-SEN parents are choosing the more academic schools. The "greater depth" kids get nothing here. Surely the real aim should be a balanced population? Tricky to achieve though in a small primary.

I also know of an academy which closed its SEN unit. The head wanted high achieving students and good results. Provision for those with SEN was removed. His stance was well if we don’t accommodate your child there are schools which do……. Win for him.

TAs are paid peanuts and are leaving left right and centre because they don’t want to be hit/kicked/bitten or spend all day changing nappies.If you have a class of 32 where 8 have SEN 30 and 3 are in nappies, 1 with a hoist and 1 needing their bloody sugars tested regularly, you are expected to get the same results as a teacher with a class of 30 with no SEN and a full time TA.

I don't get this. My friend has a child who has significant SEND and is in nappies. He was in a mainstream school for 1 year then he was sent to a special school. She said the time was right for him to be at special school and they got free transport there so no school run.

Is there a reason why children as described above - in nappies and needing hoists, kicking and biting staff, aren't sent to special schools?

Because there aren't enough special school places.

@ShellySarah no money and no spaces. Demand far outstrips supply for special schools now so the local authority chucks a few quid at the local mainstream schools, names them in the child’s EHCP and directs them to take.

Those parents and professionals who don’t work in the SEN system truly have no idea how utterly utterly fucked it is after 13 years of devastating cuts to funding.