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.

Agree with this.
Also the higher likelihood of a child being hit / injured if a fellow pupil has a meltdown.
And higher likelihood of disruption to learning due to classes having to be paused to deal with meltdowns.

You know most Sen kids don't even do this? Right?

My children have EHCPs and damn right I demand the provision in them is made, it's a statutory document. Same as I demand suitable full time education, it's a legal and human right.

Yet often the people writing them take no account of whether what they are asking other people to do is reasonable.

One I read had 16 bullet points for one child. 16 things I was supposed to do each time I taught them, never mind the needs of the other 31 children.

My dds school.has a reputation for being good with Sen children and without sounding awful, I feel the balance has tipped too far in her class.

There are now 4 children disrupting the class 2 have one to ones. 2 don't. Even the ones with a one to one kick off sometimes and the class needs to be evacuated. (Chairs thrown Tables upturned. It terrifying for the kids

I've asked about what they are doing to keep dd safe and got a bullshit answer about a risk assessment. A piece of.paper doesn't stop the disruption to learning and fear for my dd.

It's very difficult for the teacher and the school so yes I would expect they don't want to have too many as it upsets the balance.

My children have EHCPs and damn right I demand the provision in them is made, it's a statutory document. Same as I demand suitable full time education, it's a legal and human right.

Same. The needs of my child and provision required have been identified by a professional and listed In a legally bonded document.
If the school feel they can’t follow it then they need to approach the LA who are ultimately responsible for upholding the EHCP.

If the school feel they can’t follow it then they need to approach the LA who are ultimately responsible for upholding the EHCP.

Exactly! I realise schools get well and truly screwed over re funding and send but if they would educate themselves on send law I suspect they'd not fare so badly.

Then tell the LA and parents you can't make the provision without additional funding/resources and tell the parents they can take legal action against the LA to help you secure it.

Schools with a good reputation for SEND support and a welcoming ethos even have a name - magnet schools or honey pot schools.

Our local primary school is one and it is definitely problematic as their resources are skewed towards significant SEND, so children with mild SEND miss out on the support they might get at a school with fewer SEND needs and those without SEND don't get some of the opportunities they might get at other schools. For example pupil premium funding tends towards supporting SEND needs rather than being more spread across all pupil premium children.

SEND is also not evenly spread across the school, you might get a year group with no EHCPs and the one with lots. This gives really different experiences to different year groups and really bumpy results.

The LA just say we can though. What do you do then?

Not necessarily. When my DC started reception, despite very clear needs and obvious SEN, we still had to wait on a list for him to get his actual diagnosis then after receiving that apply for him to have an EHCP. So that took us to partway through Year One.

Hes now in Year 3 and we’ve waiting over a year and a half for a special school.

Those who are mad about the presence of SEN children at mainstream schools… PLEASE direct your anger at the lack of funding for special schools. And please realise how difficult it can be to get a place, we are DESPERATE for my DC to attend one and it’s just not happening.

This can only be genuinely solved through the ballot box.

We have LAs openly and daily flouting the law and the government turning a blind eye.

LAs wasting millions of £ annually of taxpayers' money on cases they lose more than 90% of.

Parents having to represent themselves against LA barristers.

Hundreds of thousands of children without a suitable education.

And parents fighting over the scraps.

It's beyond depressing!

If you know a SEN parent be nice to them. You may not appreciate what they're dealing with.

The primary school where I work is slowly becoming a special school by stealth and parents of children with no SEN are starting to take their children elsewhere. Our numbers are falling year on year and the reason is an open secret.

I am a 1-1 for 2 different children in different classes and one of these children is so dangerous to others that more than one member of staff is required to cover the hours as nobody wants to work with that child full time. Several TAs refused to work with that child at all. Every day I go home absolutely drained and now I am starting to dread going in.

For the salary I earn, the risks to me are getting too high, especially as I get older. Far too many parents want the moon on a stick AND a bag to put it in and, sadly, this is just not possible with the funding and staffing crisis that's going on.

Put it in writing that you cant. Tell them what you need to meet needs. Give parents a copy and tell them to speak to Ipsea, sossen or the coram law advice line who all offer free independent send education advice. They can explain to them what steps to take next (usually find a solicitor to do a pre action protocol letter for judicial review). This usually sorts the issue out. Legal aid is available for those who meet the criteria.

Sossen have good online info sossen.org.uk/whats-judicial-review/

It's also really important that EHCPs are properly specified and quantified. Schools often don't like this, but actually that's what ensures you have a good legal basis to obtain the correct funding. If EHCPs aren't properly specified and quantified, again direct parents to the above services who can advise/help them with appealing. Same for if a specialist school is 'full'. There is no legal basis for refusing entry to a specialist school because it's full. Parents need to appeal, again point them to the above resources.

There was a school a couple of years back that actually took judicial review action against a council themselves re a child's EHCP. www.hcbgroup.com/site/blog/school-brings-landmark-judicial-review-against-medway-council

and make it clear to parents LAs are the ones responsible for ensuring EHCP provision is in place, not schools (section 42 of the children and families act 2014).

Ah ok with my friends son he is disabled and had severe developmental delay because of a rare chromosomal disorder (not downs). When his younger brother was 16 months old he over took his older brother developmentally.

He'd had a diagnosis at 18 months. He was never going to have to fight for a special school, it was a given all along. I think he just spent a year in reception for a bit of a normal environment but the plan was always a special school.

I agree with @BettyBunMaker posts. EHCPs are legal documents, the SEP in them isn’t optional.

EHCPs can be fully funded. No, LAs won’t do it unless forced, but it is possible to force them. Schools need to work with parents and support them to enforce the EHCP/secure a detailed, specified and quantified section F rather than just say it isn’t possible.

@BeReet, obviously you may work with some really difficult parents but like most parents of SEN kids, my wanting the LA not to break the law is hardly asking for "the moon on a stick".

In what other area of life do people routinely need to resort to tribunals, wait years etc to get access to a basic taxpayer funded service for their kids knowing that the public provider is losing over 90% of the cases?

It's all of our money that's going on those LA lawyers.

That is awful @Rainbox99 for everyone involved. I'm sorry the school put you in that position. What the heck was the child doing in a GCSE Physics class though?

I have never seen anything like that in my school.

Which isn't to say I don't believe you.

It does get very complex to provide for all children’s needs once you have eg 2 children with EHCPs and 7 with individual SEN plans at lower levels (quite a normal primary class ime). Even at a simple level, if 1 child requires all material on screen on a blue background and one on a high contrast white background, which do I choose to fulfil the needs of both? If one requires a wide range of practical resources to access their curriculum, but the other must have a low stimulation, non-distracting classroom environment. Or if both EHCP pupils (and 4 of the others) need access to a separate room to self regulate/ have 1:1 session but the school only has one such room for 9 classes. Etc etc.

This and only if the parents are motivated. Sometimes these DC go into mainstream yr 7 functioning at a yr1 level, shortly after that they generally stop attending school.

I don't know if it's the same in every authority but certainly in mine it's catch 22.

• if you push for diagnosis too early, there a many things that won't be formally diagnosed until a certain age, then you get pushed to the back of the queue. Eg a child has clearly very complex needs so nursery push for an ehcp, get told they can't be formally diagnosed with X until age 5 so now the same child is back in a queue until at least spring 2024 and a y1 child.
• lack of funding for certain things, ie told to persevere with speech & language therapy until a CP place becomes available. It's clear speech and language isn't the problem but child needs to see a CP before we can progress with the specialist provision that they need so have no choice but to go to mainstream unless parents want to be in bother for not sending their child to school.
• Then as previous posters have mentioned once a child is in mainstream it becomes much harder to get into specialist provision because the onus is on the school to educate the child to the best of their ability.

It's not a case of daft parents sending their kids to mainstream schools when they clearly need specialist provision, it's a system that's full of impossible hoops to jump through that nobody in power gives a shit about fixing.

Even "fully funded" doesn't cover everything.

No one fully funds the 4 different paper colours I have to photocopy on to. No one fully funds the 1:1 timetables, no one fully funds the 'give 1:1 instructions' to seven kids in one room, no one fully funds the 'X works best in a silent environment and Y works best wirh noise'. No one fully funds 'print all board resources' (which takes ages to delete the answers). No one fully funds all manner of teacher level intervention that in theory 'can be met' but in reality are destroying teachers.

A fully funded EHCP absolutely can fund every last little bit of provision.

GCSE Physics doesn’t have to be compulsory though. So it is a failure in the pupil’s EHCP not to provide greater support and different provision. The school can support the parents to force the LA to improve the EHCP.