Webchat with Ofsted’s lead inspector for special educational needs, Charlie Henry, on Wednesday at 12.30pm

[BojanaMumsnet]

Hello

We’re pleased to welcome HM Inspector Charlie Henry for a webchat on Wednesday 2 December, for an hour at 12.30pm.

HM Inspector Charlie Henry is a qualified teacher and has further advanced qualifications in the education of pupils with special educational needs and in educational psychology.

Charlie has worked in the field of special educational and disability for more than 30 years as teacher, special school manager and educational psychologist. Since joining Ofsted in 2004, Charlie has led many school inspections in mainstream primary schools, secondary schools, special schools, pupil referral units and specialist colleges. He has held responsibility for leading Ofsted’s inspection policy development for disabled children and those who have special educational needs.

Do join us on Wednesday at 12.30pm or post your question in here in advance if you can’t make it on the day.

UPDATE: Just to let you know that there is a consultation on Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission's proposals for inspecting how effectively local areas fulfil their responsibilities towards disabled children and young people and those with special educational needs.

Please click here for more information about the consultation.

Thanks

MNHQ

How do you deal with schools that deny SEN? That is parents are getting frustrated that the school continuously denies that a problem exists, the school do not follow up concerns, do not put IEP's (or the current equivalent) in place, refuse to assess for dyslexia stating they are a dyslexia friendly school, put measures in place so it looks good. But in reality they are not followed and we have it in writing that they 'don't have time', bully parents raising unfounded allegations to try and stop them pushing for support for their child, dismiss bullying towards sen children as the child being too sensitive or a one off, stop interventions because they are 'not working if the child does not try it' (because they can't!) and therefore the child is left with no support rather than a different support, the school blatantly states your child does not have x despite being on the assessment route and gaining a diagnosis!!

Yes we could have applied for an echp but due to the schools tactics we ended up pulling our child out. Plus the smt lied about what was happening with our child despite the SENCO saying the same things as us and agreeing with the things we said at assessment. I was even told they needed to toe the party line with regard to the SMT.

And more importantly how can we raise this with a forth coming ofsted visit without revealing while are that would lead to a further breakdown of relationship with the school for children remaining in the school? And raise concerns for other children and the non dealing of low level bullying? And the fact that so many children have been pulled out of the school due to the beliefs and policies of the school but of course they aren't there to tell their story?

And dealing with SEN children, just because they are achieving academically does not mean there is not a problem!

Ad teachers need to be taught about masking. Parents should be believed not dismissed as crappy parents.

Why do special schools get held to the same account for absences as mainstream schools? My son's SLD/PMLD school has many children who are really very poorly. It is not unusual for children to have to spend time in hospital. And yet the head comes under pressure for the school absence rate being below 95% (which is usually is).

My son is doing noticeably better this year (in year 12) now he is a little more free of the national curriculum and therefore able to access curriculum that is actually relevant to his needs and engaging for him.

(His special school has been the best thing that happened to him by the way).

Could I ask:

Do you feel that the provision for SEN caters more for those with learning restrictions than those that are more able? Why is this so?

What does he think the answer is so that gifted students can reach full potential rather than being held back by lack of staffing and over provision for weaker students?

My question is in three parts, your box ticking requests are failing SEN children.

How do you feel about schools wasting the NHS time and funds for their box ticking exercises for attention?

How do you feel about schools wasting social services time and funds as a way to victim blame parents of children with SEN and so schools can mask that the school let the children down, and intimidate parents?

How do you feel about schools wasting L.A. time and funds on truency which is victim blaming children with SEN the school let down. Children not enegaged because of school failure, children with missed SEN schools ignore because the child is going to get C grades in GCSE, or a pass level in their SATS, and children with diagnosed conditions, all made to feel bad because of your policies, schools have to box tick, and choose to fail children so they can get an outstanding ofsted report.

Do you know schools humiliate and get children to bully SEN students over their attendance, by putting up attendance levels publically. Then offer a class with 100% attendance a non uniform day, knowing peer pressure will cause bullying of children with SEN. SEN includes children with untreatable, incurable, chronic, invisible health conditions. You then reward bully schools with outstanding performance for such treatment of disabled children.

I would like to put my opinion of your organisations practices, I won't as mnhq will delete it.

How do you feel about schools wasting the NHS time and funds for their box ticking exercises for attention? Should be
How do you feel about schools wasting the NHS time and funds for their box ticking exercises for attendance?

Two questions:

1. Why does Ofsted sideline rather than mainstream SEN issues? It frequently talks of 'SEN specialists'. If Ofsted expects all teachers to be 'teachers of SEN', why aren't all it's inspectors 'inspectors of SEN'? Senior staff are capable of banging on about gifted and talented children but remain silent on SEN and clearly have little working knowledge of the law as is shown in documents such as this
2. Why does Ofsted not comply with its own framework document (and the law) and inspect compliance with the Equality Act and its obligations as set out in the Act and the Specific Duties Regulations? Why should any school obtain a 'good' or 'outstanding' grade if there is no evidence it is complying with the law protecting disabled children and their rights in schools (e.g. accessibility plan, s.149 PSED duty, medical needs policy)?

Until Ofsted can address the basic inconsistencies in its approach to schools and the law and demonstrate a working understanding of the statutory rights of disabled children, it is very difficult to have any faith in its ability to challenge the 'dark arts' of LAs and their local area partners.

Why aren't schools forced to document the effectiveness of TA support assigned to children with SEN (particularly those with a statement or EHCP)? Last year it was considered meeting the terms of dd's statement to have a bum on the seat next to her and acceptable that attendance by the TA was considered fulfilling her role. It is only as a result of a safeguarding fail and a serious breech of confidentiality that I have been able to force the school to provide a TA more able and willing to support and to insist that all support is documented. Even so the school have still felt, this year, that it is acceptable to lie to me and fail to provide the support documented in her statement.

Since education reforms made it compulsory to stay in education/training until 19, and then further reforms made a GCSE Maths/English or equivalent compulsory until a C or Pass is achieved, it seems that many mainstream schools are retaining learners with Special Educational Needs far longer than they used to, which is preventing them from joining more appropriate provision and more appropriate learning opportunities.

Why are there not more SEN provisions outside of mainstream, to allow for all learners to gain the individualised education they are legally entitled to have?

My question is this.

When it becomes obvious that a child desperately needs full time 1:1 support in school, why is it not easier for the schools to get emergency funding to cover it while the lengthy ehcp process is ongoing?

Also, why are people being employed as SENCos when they have absolutely no working knowledge of Autism or sensory processing issues? It shouldn't be the parents job to teach their schools special needs team about the basics of such a common SEN!

Surely such a job should require a teacher to have a good working knowledge of the conditions they are most likely to have to work with when schools try to be inclusive?

Skullyton I think emergency funding differs from LA to LA tbh. I know in our LA a school could get emergency funding within a week if need was demonstrated. But then again our LA funds statements/ehcp entirely separate to a schools SEN budget so that might account for it.

Wow, this is quickly turning into a school-attacking exercise. If you have trouble with an individual school, contact them. Don't harass this poor chap!

Now that School Action, School Action Plus and LEA funding for the first 12/ 16 hours dedicated support and statements of educational need have all been abolished how are Ofsted investigating:

1. School are inclusive of children with identified SEN (as the additional cost directly effects school budget especially those with dedicated extra cost of support identified in an EHCP)

2. Continuing to identify individual pupil SEN and flagging and injecting support for those needs at the earliest opportunity not just waiting till pupil drops out of average range.

3. Keeping records of additional support and differentiated teaching provided to pupils so that parents/ school can when desired jump through the necessary loops in the slow progress to obtaining an EHCP.

I'm fearful that pupils are being sidelined and excluded because its now a conflict of interest for schools to identify SEN. My eldest is fortunate to have had a statement and now an EHCP (Autism) and is in a special provision for this. My middle son had a little short term differentiated support, that brought him up to an acceptable, for him, standard.

My youngest (we believe is also Autistic) pre school has had speech and language and is under a community paed but with a fantastic teacher this year and a very high IQ she's not needing more than differentiated teaching and a quiet space to retreat too. Without clear doccumentation trails and with her not being disruptive in class I can not see how we will be able to progress to an EHCP unless she is allowed to get into a really bad position with school refusal and disruptive outbursts leading to the school allocating 1-1. I want to know how I keep my happy, but different child, happy and included because the current system is set up for her to only get help if she becomes excluded first.

Strawberry, quite often parents HAVE contacted the schools involved.but with LEA backing the schools are failing the SEN children. Without ofsted making SEN a priority the schools and LEAs will do what they can to not spend money on SEN children.

My question is do Inspectors of SEN schools have (i) any training in the SEN speciality of the schools involved and (2) Do they take any account of pupil profile when assessing progress and behaviour. Our son's school recently was rated very poorly but most of the comments did not seem to take into account pupil profile e.g. a large proportion of pupils at this school have been excluded or exhibit school refusal at mainstream and all have social communication difficulties . The school meets his needs much better than his supposedly good "mainstream" yet as a result of this report his placement was in jeopardy as our LA and others seriously considered withdrawing their children.

How do Ofsted inspect schools for Sen provision? Do they look into individauls on a random selection on the Sen register? How deep do they look? My son doesn't have his statement implemented and I've complained officially and now via the la. However I hear that the school is up for a Sen award. With only four kids with ehcp / statements and a quarter of those ( ie my sons) being ignored - how are they measured? Do the school pick out a child who has clear needs with more hefty funding and say "look at what we do well here, with this child" while maybe others in the school are not Getting what is in their ehcp / statements

Also, why are people being employed as SENCos when they have absolutely no working knowledge of Autism or sensory processing issues? It shouldn't be the parents job to teach their schools special needs team about the basics of such a common SEN!

Sencos are just bog standard teachers-they don't have to have any qualifications (barring taking the NASEN within 3 years). Many get only half a day release time to do their SENCo work (all SEN for the whole school!) and the rest of the time have a virtually full time teaching responsibility. They aren't specialist teachers on every form of SEN and they don't have the experience of Ed Psychs. I get no extra salary for being SENCo and do it because I'm in interested in it-nobody else in my school would touch the role with a barge pole! I've seen plenty of people hand back the role saying its thankless and endless with no job satisfaction and endless paperwork and criticism! There is a massive recruitment and retention problem in teaching at the moment! Schools just do not have a pool of overqualified SENCos to choose from!! I'm learning as I go but certainly don't know about everything until I come across it.

Perhaps it would be fairer to rephrase your question as 'why are sencos not given the pay and release time to study different areas of SEN to more depth by the LEA?'...

Strawberry I raised every issue with firstly the SENCo and then the HT. My question is more why, when progress is measured to within an inch of its life in schools, isn't it a requirement that the TA support effectiveness is also measured? It's not good enough that the children with the highest needs are lumbered (in dd's case) with poor support that goes unchecked because schools don't have to measure its effectiveness and attendance by a TA even if totally useless is seen as meeting requirements.

Hello Mr Henry and thank you for giving us parent carers the opportunity to chat with you.

It's a rare opportunity, so forgive me for going on a bit with all the questioning!

My questions/comments would be:

When searching for an appropriate school, parents rely on the accuracy and relevance of the Ofsted report.

1). Should the report specify whether the SEN children / cases included in the report were for children educated in the mainstream or in separate annexed "learning support centres" and to what extent?

2). Should the report also spell out how many children with SEN have moved out of the school without completing the education through to the maximum age limit of the setting since the last inspection?

3). Given the rising numbers of children in mainstream schools with Autism, should the report specify the percentages of staff currently trained in autism and to what level?

4). How many children with SEN in the school were given a disapplication from the national curriculum?

5). With reference to the Equality Act and the school's duty to promote equality and inclusion, how do Ofsted propose to evidence that a school has done more than just hold one class/school assembly and actually bought into this social, legal and moral obligation?

6). Parent View and parent/carer questionnaires issued by Ofsted do not, as yet, differentiate between parents with children with SEN and those without. Clearly the experiences can be hugely different because of the differing needs. Would it not be more helpful, both for parents and in analysis, to differentiate these?

Without these sort of specifics, what help is an Ofsted report to parents and carers searching for a school which would be the best for their particular child.

I would also have liked to ask about how parents and carers could identify which schools have been utilising creative methods of exclusion for children with SEN, but that might be one question too many!

How is it possible that a school which has been found to have committed multiple acts of disability discrimination is still considered outstanding in all areas by Ofsted?

EXACTLY the questions put by
Skullyton