School not providing what is on IEP.

[FatherSpodoKomodo]

DS1 is year 1 and nearly 6. I was shown his IEP in October and was told he would be doing Narrative therapy (continued from Reception) and would also be doing a Motor Skills programme. I didn't see his IEP at the March parents evening.

I found out last week that he has only done one session of the Motor Skills programme.

What happens when a school doesn't give the child what they said they would on an IEP? What is my next step?

Most of the mainstream primary schools in our area only have an average spend of approx 4K per pupil.

Perhaps the mainstream primary schools in your area aren't recommended by EPs to parents who have children with SEN

mrz They are. Most of the mainstream primaries in our area has the same % of children with statements of SEN as your school.

^have

I'm not talking about children with statements daftdame I'm talking about those children who need support but have been refused a statement. Often children like insanity's daughter

insanity's daughter has a statement.

mrz Don't EPs usually recommend schools during Statutory Assessment? They do recommend mainstream schools for pupils with SEN in our area.

Yes EPs can recommend schools as part of the statementing process but they can also recommend schools based on their personal knowledge of the school to parents who have failed to acquire a statement or indeed to parents who haven't tried to get a statement for their child

and yes I know insanity's daughter has a statement but that doesn't mean there aren't many children like her who don't

DS got a statement because we killed ourselves proving he needed one before he got into the school system of hierarchy, misinformation, undertrained SENCOs etc.

We were continually told he wouldn't get one until the day he got one which wasn't worth the paper it was written on. Indeed when we began the appeal against the woefully inadequate provision, the parent partnership (who were supposed to be supporting us but shared and office with the LA SEN bods) told us that there was no POINT in appealing the statement because we were lucky to have one at all given that everything in it could be delivered without having one at all .

My ds would most likely have been one of the children Mrz talks about being in her school but without a statement if it wasn't for the fact I had a lot of inside knowledge into how the system works and also how stacked against parents and their children the SEN truly is.

Indeed, the provision we were asking for was not what the LA 'provided' so they threw inappropriate SALT and OT at ds despite him not needing it (he did need both, but a special type and not as many hours as they were offering), because they had already purchased those services in block contract deals, thus depriving a good number of other children those services in order to win a tribunal against a parent that was challenging their lack of appropriate provision.

That provision failed him, and he is now in an independent special school, which didn't take much of a fight given how much he had deteriorated.

What a waste. His life chances are now at risk, a good number of vulnerable children lost their SALT and OT for a year or so, and he is costing the tax payer substantially more that he needed to.

Direct Payments are supposed to be introduced that would technically have enabled us to purchase the provision ourselves (Thus allowing us to have our cheaper but outcome-based provision) but Local Authorities are refusing these to parents on the basis that services they might chose aren't being independently evaluated and that it risks parents being exploited.

What they fail to acknowledge is that their own shambles of holistic, non-accountable, make it up on the spot provision is also not ever independently evaluated and thus risks parents, children and tax payers being exploited.

mrz The point I am trying to make is that spend varies hugely from LA to LA. The % statements in our LA is the same as yours, yet your school spends more than most mainstream primaries in our LA.

Obviously your demographic is different, hence the difference in spending.

Yet the % of statements is the same, could it be that the children who receive these statements have vastly different needs in terms of severity?

Hence a statement is not necessarily indicative of a high level of need (as it usually is perceived.)

IMO A statement is indicative of a high level of need AND a strong advocate, usually parent.

High level of need + no advocate = no statement
Low level of need + strong advocate = no statement
Low level of need + no advocate = no statement

I think it is worth bearing in mind however, that a statement itself does not raise attainment levels and more often than not they go unread and are pretty useless for the child anyway.

If the child is particularly disruptive I think that the school would more readily play the advocate role if the parent doesn't.

Starlight I agree with you except I have no idea concerning levels of need nationwide, except that the level of need required for a statement varies from county to county. Thus I'd question the Low Level & strong advocate outcome. (Our family might be the exception to this rule).

I agree with you regarding effectiveness of statements for raising attainment.

You're right about consistency.

My ds would probably have been considered low need because for a long time his needs were ignored/denied and covered up by selective and inappropriate assessments chosen to give a more able picture.

When we were looking for a school for him many refused to even see him as on the basis of his statement he looked more severe than he was. That isn't to say that his statement didn't accurately reflect his needs, but the REASON it did so was because his family had the resources to make sure it did.

If the were presented with version 1 of his statement no doubt they'd feel more able to meet his needs.

A school has no idea just from looking at a statement, how many drafts it has been through or how fastidious the child's advocate has been, or how detailed the assessments or how competent the recommenders.

And when all is said and done, neither the child or the parent has any control over the quality of the provision that the statement secures even if it tightly worded and specified.