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

[Skullyton]

Redlocks, i dont need to reword my question. I know SENCo's are normal teachers, i'm asking WHY they're just normal teachers.

When someone's job is to work with children with SEN to draw up IEPS, to liase with the various drs and therapists children are referred to, to supply therapy equipment and to organise and arrange training for the other teachers, why on EARTH are they not trained?

As a parent, it really doesn't instil great confidence in my sons school to have to spend the first 3mo of a new SENCo's placement, teaching them about his SEN and disabilities so they can help him appropriately or for them to tell me they have NEVER HEARD of a condition he has.

[Obs2015]

If we told you what we really felt it would be deleted.
My son has been failed, I have been failed. Accused of munchausens . Others are told it's their 'parenting'. The constant fight is soul destroying. Literally. I'm surprised more SN MN'ers don't have nervous breakdowns. But you know all this. It's well documented. So why are you here? Really. Seriously?

[IguanaTail]

Hello

With SEN budgets being literally halved in schools, how do ofsted expect schools to provide anything close to the amount of support many children need?

We are told of the "notional" £6000 per pupil with SEN that must be spent before additional funding can even be applied for. Schools don't have notional money. We have real children who need real help. How can ofsted expect the same level of support without the money to match it?

Parents know their kids are being short-changed; schools know that they are not able to provide the support. The situation seems hopeless. And at the root of it all are the most vulnerable kids who need the most help. Is it fair to judge schools on their SEN provision when they know they can't afford what they need? I feel that ofsted needs to recognise that schools are in a terrible position here - they are hardly likely to admit that swathes of desperate kids are having little to no support when they know they will be blamed. Do you agree? What can be done?

[PhilPhilConnors]

Similar to PolterGoose's question.
My dc's secondary school is rated outstanding, yet they have a dreadful reputation with SN and will move the child on rather than support and help.
Do OFSTED inspections not take this into account?

[PhilPhilConnors]

And what Obs said.

[Tidypidy]

Two comments from me:
Please can able, gifted and talented pupils attract the same findings and interventions as less able pupils?
Please can Type 1 diabetic pupils attract automatic 1-1 funding rather than parents and schools having to jump through hoops to get the care they need.

Thank tou

[mouldycheesefan]

Wow some people phrase their questions in the rudest manner imaginable!

[mouldycheesefan]

Tidypidy, less able pupils do not get any special funding.

[Alfieisnoisy]

I don't think I can add anything to the comments and questions by Iguana.

Sadly my experience of the mainstream system for pupils with SEN is appalling, too little staff training, too little funding and too many children with SEN being forced into mainstream schools and left to flounder. My own experience with my child is a case in point and it has taken a lot of fighting to get him moved to a more suitable educational setting. My discussions with other parents in the school have shown my experiences are not unique.

[GnomePhone]

Why are schools rewarded by Ofsted for getting rid of 'difficult' pupils with SEN? I mean the pupils who:

• bring attendance records down through absence due to mental and physical illness
  

• bring academic and behaviour levels down through lack of adequate SEN identification and classroom support
  

• need extra staffing and financial resources which the schools don't have?
  

Does Ofsted keep a measure of how many children have left a particular school and explore the reasons why?

[shazzarooney99]

Wow theres a lot of posts so not sure mines will get answered but here goes.

I have an 8 year old whom ive always been convinced was on the spectrum, because of lack of communication from school the peadatrician has said he has autistic traits and sensory issues, however we have since saw a private Ot who has says he has sensory processing disorder.

To cut a long story short my son behaves well in school, although lately he has been having a meltdown every morning and not wanting to go to school.

His regular peadatrician is in maternity, my sons behaviour is getting worst, he is increasingley violent and threatens susicide even tries.

Now we have saw the peadatrician today and the peadatrician has reffered us to the complex needs team saying its way more than Asd, Cahms have saw my son twice and said he needs an Asd and they cannot help because its not a mental health issue.

So my son does have a lot of signs of Asd, but could this be more of a mental illness? or is it all linked to Asd?

[uggerthebugger]

I can't make it for the webchat (no access to MN at work) - anyway, if people are interested, here's a couple of useful things that might be worth reading before Charlie Henry arrives:

Many of us on here have to fight like honey badgers with work with our local authorities & NHS CCGs to get our kids the support they need.

Next year, Ofsted & the CQC are going to start inspecting these organisations, to see how well they are doing with putting the new SEN legislation into practice.

They won't be inspecting schools directly, but they will be inspecting LAs and NHS organisations, and they'll be visit schools to see how the SEN reforms are working in practice at ground level....

Charlie Henry is one of the people who are putting together the framework for these inspections. He's looking for people's views on their proposed framework - if you can, it's well worth putting your views across.

You can find the consultation document here - www.gov.uk/government/consultations/local-area-send-consultation


Also, this is worth reading, it's what Charlie Henry had to say about how he sees the new inspection process working www.communitycare.co.uk/2015/10/22/ofsted-cqc-will-inspect-special-educational-needs-provision/

[uggerthebugger]

So here's my question:

Lots of us on Mumsnet's special needs boards have had serious problems getting our local area organisations to provide the support our kids need. Far too often, it's because LA SEN managers feel free to flout the law and the SEND Code of Practice.

You're rolling out inspections for local area organisations - which is great. These people need holding to account. However, your current proposed framework says the following:

The inspection teams will usually consist of one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors (HMI) from Ofsted, a Children’s Services Inspector from CQC, and a trained inspector from a local authority (not from the local area being inspected). The local authority inspector will have specialist knowledge of disability and special educational needs and have a health, social care or education background.

I'm deeply uneasy about the prospect of having LA inspectors on these teams. For too many of us, strategic and operational-level LA staff aren't part of the problem - they are the problem.

They don't need to learn best practice - they already know what best practice looks like, and most of these managers have already been given seven-figure sums by the DfE to show them. What they need, put bluntly, is hard, rigorous, unyielding accountability. I'm not sure that they will get that if they get access to the inside track on the inspection process.

So my question is this -

Will Ofsted consider dropping the LA-employed inspector from the core team? If not, then what measures will Ofsted take to ensure that LA inspectors carry out their inspection duties rigorously and honestly - without fear, favour, or conflict of interest?*

[Squashybanana]

I would like to ask whether sen response is considered as part of what makes a school 'outstanding'. The ofsteds I have read often barely mention sen arrangements (outside of 'differentiation') . it often seems to be a bolt on if it is mentioned at all (I see G and T mentioned much more frequently) when really the inclusiveness of a school is fundamental to its ethos and I don't think any school which doesn't go out of its way to try to meet the needs of as many of the local children as it possibly can should ever attract the 'outstanding' label. There is a tension between schools being inclusive and schools attaining highly on measures of academic performance, attendance etc which I think makes Ofsted appear irrelevant. In fact we tell many sen parents to ignore Ofsted reports and see how the school approaches the idea of including their child which will give them much more useful information, but this is wrong, isn't it? Ofsted reports should be of use to any parent not just parents of academically average plus neurotypical children. Has their been any consideration of including inclusiveness, sen ethos etc as part of the measure of mainstream schools?

[BoffinMum]

I would like to ask what OFSTED are doing to make sure schools are coping well with children who have mental health problems, particularly in areas where funding for support is very tight.

[GruntledOne]

Do Ofsted look at statements, EHCPs and annual review reports? What training do they have in SEN and, in particular, SEN law? When they see a statement or EHCP which blatantly breaks the law (as all too many do) by, in particular, being vague and lacking in detail, do they ever question schools and SENCOs about why they haven't challenged that when they were consulted about taking the child, or in annual reviews?

If not, would you be prepared to include this in Ofsted inspections in future?

[GruntledOne]

For Ofsted inspections of local authority SEN departments, are you checking whether they comply with the law, for instance in ensuring that there is a full reassessments when children transfer from statements to EHCPs? Far too many councils are ignoring this and I would suggest that, when they do, they should be graded by Ofsted as failing.

The same applies to councils that don't meet time limits for finalising and amending EHCPs, and those which produce vague and non-specific EHCPs full of phrases like "X may benefit from..." and "X will have access to..."

[Tidypidy]

Mouldy and Poltergoose

I'm aware that no SEN children receive automatic funding - it's that I think is wrong. I am employed to give 1-1 support to a pupil and to provide extra lessons for a small group. The funding for these must come from somewhere.

I believe being AG& T should be considered an SEN as shouldn't all children be helped to achieve their full potential?

[chocadd1ct]

tidy, I have one child with complex SN and LD and one who is G&T. I have been to the motions and had a very hard andong battle to get support my DD with LD so desperately needs. My G&T child does not receive extra support but having both with my DC and seeing the funding slashed from the most vulnerable, it would not even cross my mind to request extra support for my gifted daughter. She will be fine no matter but I can see how desperatly funding is needed with severe and complex needs and very much prefer to have the little bit of extra funding that is there to go to children who cannot access the curriculum without extra support.

[AgnesDiPesto]

My concern is that schools can often present an excellent appearance of good SEN provision on paper & even on inspection day (by getting the tricky children offsite) but this is a facade and bears no relation to the reality. It is easy to manufacture impressive looking inclusion plans and provision maps (councils often even provide egs which schools cut and paste) but often the children do not receive this provision.

Do you think there is a role for:

1. More meaningful parental feedback - OFSTED questionnaires are often just preset questions and don't leave room for explaining more individual issues that are causing concern. What about interviewing parents?
   

1. More direct questioning and observation of teachers and teaching assistants? I would dearly love to see teachers questioned by inspectors about IEP targets, targets picked at random and teachers asked to demonstrate how these are currently being worked on with a particular child. Many teachers leave children with SEN to be taught entirely by the teaching assistant and have little to no contact with the child themselves. This was our experience the class teacher never even knew what my sons IEP targets were, never worked on them personally and actually didn't even know how to speak to or engage him (he has autism and limited speech). if an inspector could walk in and ask a teacher to demonstrate how a specific target was being worked on with my child that would have been very revealing because my sons teacher would not have known where to start - as he had 1:1 they barely ever spoke to him (I ended up having to remove him from that school - rated good by OFSTED - when 4 consecutive teachers behaved like this and the Head flatly denied there could be a problem with lack of teacher input).
   

I cannot see a change in these attitudes until teachers fear being 'caught out' - which as long as inspections are a paper or class based exercise rather than looking at individual children's needs is unlikely

I also have concerns about how OFSTED can challenge low expectations as schools often blame the child or their disability for lack of progress - not their own teaching. For e.g. we were told my son did not have the ability to learn maths and was on low P scales - we thought this was ridiculous as he had been obsessed with numbers since age 2. In the end at Year 1 I gave him an iPad with some primary maths apps and he taught himself 2 years of maths in 6 weeks. I then went into school and demonstrated to the teacher what he could do - then and only then did they see my child as one with the capacity to learn. Yet I fear the school, Council and OFSTED would have accepted a sub level of progress a year on the basis of his diagnosis - and I fear that many hundreds of children are written off by mainstream schools like this every year. Yes he has difficulties with the word problems and the problem solving but he is ahead of his peers in mental maths. Parents shouldn't have to prove to teachers their child is worthy of being taught.

I must also mention that both the 'outstanding' nursery and the 'good' school asked me to keep my son home on inspection day ( I refused but many parents feel forced to agree). Again I would suggest inspectors insist on seeing the children with SEN / Statements and if they are 'ill' that day make sure they come back for an unscheduled visit another day.

[AgnesDiPesto]

I forgot to mention that I wrote the IEPs myself with outside providers - school rarely contributed anything and I often had to send work into school for his 1:1 to do with him because the teacher did not set any.

I don't think I am the only parent who 'home educated' their SEN child despite them attending school and sent their child to school purely for the social aspect.

[Rotunda]

I'm afraid that I have to agree with Agnes and with the poster who expressed concerns at LA's being inspectors, particularly as some LA's are now considering strategic mergers and partnerships, politically it just doesn't instill confidence.

Many of us have experienced our children being consistently denied the reasonable adjustments and support they need, year in, year out, apart from the one week when Ofsted inspectors were in when miraculous things happened that had been asking for, although they disappeared again once Ofsted left. We have also been called to collect our children when Ofsted were due to visit, our child who was "running a temperature" for example, only to find they had yet again manipulated the situation to exclude the child for the day. Under these circumstances, had Ofsted inspectors given an invitation to the parents of SEN children in particular to voice their concerns, then the schools might not have achieved the grade, which they absolutely did not deserve. Often these are schools with so many issues, (a clue perhaps being in the high percentage of staff turnover, so temp and new staff are forever playing catch-up), yet they manage to put on a show for the inspection week. If they can genuinely do it for one week, then why fail the children for the rest of the year? What about the schools that strategically manage "difficult" children out at the end of the school year rather than risk increasing their in-year transfer stats?

Sorry, that wasn't really a question, unless you could suggest how parents ought to have confidence in the Ofsted reports when mums on here are saying that they repeatedly witness schools, and often the LA's with too, just hoodwinking your inspectors and the only people you speak to tend to be hand-picked parents that the school put forward themselves and your inspectors not asking specifically to speak to a wider group of parents of the SEN children, (both those in the mainstream and those in the Learning Support units). We don't need to know how Amy Average's mum, niece of the school Chair of Governors, feels about her child's education. We need to know about the schools acceptance, inclusion and education and support of those that need them most.

For schools that fail our children, what powers really exist to bring about a change in the school leadership? Many of us have experienced our worst imaginable horrors at schools that Ofsted have deemed to be "Good" or "Outstanding", heaven forbid one that might even be deemed to be in need of improvement and yet the leadership remain unchanged and the Ofsted reports barely give a passing comment to those pupils with SEN.

[Rotunda]

Sorry. That was meant to be a warm and constructive comment.