Competition time - Who lives in the worst LA for SEN?

[Agnesdipesto]

2010 figures here

2009 figures here

Mine is officially bottom for age 11 - but Star think yours pips us at age 16 and for delay in issuing statements (there is a typo in 2010 the third LA map is actually for age 16 not age 11)

Believe it or not my LA put out a press release about how their exclusion figure has gone down and how well they were doing yet failed to mention it has about the worst Key Stage 2 and 3 results for SEN in the Country.

Some of the data is broken down by type of SEN too.

Thanks for that - really interesting! The stats about delay etc. are red herrings though. My LA is almost 100% now on issuing Statements within deadlines, but turns down over 75% of applications and is a great one for taking parents to Tribunal then backing down and agreeing to assess. So it looks good on paper, but actually it doesn't comply in many cases and delays even beginning the process in most and turns down most others! Crap on attainment gap too.

Interesting - but i think, looking at the borough that we are in and the surrounding ones i think i can excuse a little of the differences in attainment. There are some areas that are renowned for academic achievement. We are in a borough that has grammar schools that can pick and choose who they want - many from out of the borough. That means that you get an artificial spike of attainment - raising the borough average. 'the rest' of the borough are left to fill the less desirable places - where in fairness, NT children don't achieve as much either. I noticed this in other areas that have similar - North Yorkshire etc.
Our choice is push for grammar, or go out of borough, or go private.
It doesn't excuse their statement issuing targets though!

thanks for that, very interesting. auntevil, yep definitely in the same area, my older dcs are in the less desireable schools

Mine is pretty good overall. I think the attainment gap is to do with good teaching of NT children, not poor teaching of children with SEN.

which bit do i click on? cant seem to work it out but pretty sure Herts suck big time

click on the links below where it says

Theme 3: Local Authority indicators for children with SEN:

It's a toughie, bigcar - i'm not at the point of choosing secondary, but i'm not relishing the thought! The 'sporty boys ' school is rampant for bullying if you're not fitting straight in. The dep. head advised my friend with an AS son not to choose it as he would be a prime target!

ds1 will be going there in sept. I think their pastoral care there is pretty good, have friends with dcs higher up the school and apart from the bullying have heard pretty good things, the sport side will definitely be a big plus for ds1. Dd2 goes to the girls version. Neither of them would be my first choice school but we don't live in the catchment for any other schools, well apart from one but having looked round there I wouldn't even consider putting it on the form.

I've heard good things about the girls school - but i must admit i'm when i hear their language on the bus. The boys up the road have always behaved better imo. Probably me being judgy as i have had to travel with toddlers on the same bus and had to explain words that i hadn't planned on them knowing for a very long time!

that's not great is it!

Thanks for those links Agnes, it makes for interesting reading. Our LA's performance isn't great, as I expected from an inner London council.

But I'm not sure how useful the indicators really are for me anyway. Our sm wasn't issued within 26 weeks as we had to appeal refusal to assess. To me, the time taken to issue a sm isn't that important, the actual provision and wording matters far more.

The attainment indicators aren't that useful for children like DS either. He did well his KS2 SATs, but
a) He was still performing below his potential (based on his cognitive tests) and
b) It says nothing about his poor social and independence skills and emotional health, which I think is far more important than his academic levels in predicting how well he will do in the future.

Mine is distinctly average. Interestingly the attainment gap appears a lot lower in the neighbouring authority, but that's probably because NT childrens' attainment is low!

I think the tables are more useful than the headline data my DH has managed to work out that their figures for asd are even worse than for other sen. Ie far bigger attainment gap even compared to other LAs between asd and other sen

Mine fairs well. In the 98% or higher bracket for issuing statements on time (and I know they're actually quite proactive about issuing them). The Gap age 11 is one of the lowest, but it's one of the highest age 16. Looking at the SEN prevalence map for the county, the locations where there's most kids with SEN unfortunately correlate with the ones where the secondary schools aren't exactly the best.