So, - statements are going, kids chucked off SEN register and no legal entitlement to homeschool hours!?

[StarlightMaJesty]

Have I got it right?

If so, why aren't teachers striking over this or ar thy just going to throw the kids out for their parents to care for during school hours?

God I hope it isn't true, taken me five months to get an hour a day for DS!

In our LA they are no longer going to issue statements, other than where a child has severe physical disabilities. They are bringing in something with a new name, but it is unlikely to be legally enforceable in the way a statement is.

I am wondering if the system will at last start having to take account of human rights laws which for some very strange reason are not currently linked into the SEN system.

It isn't!

Ladies

What is going on here is scaremongering. No local authority can say that they are not issuing SSEN. It would be an illegal policy examinable by Judical Review and the LA would fold before the ink was dry on the paper. This approach has been going on for years and in reality has not changed much. What has happened is the LAs are using the uncertainty of the Green Paper to make various headline pronouncements that parents then believe.

So if you tell SENCOs that the law has changed [their LA is now a pathfinder LA - it has not in fact the LA has of offer the new working model with the appeal right to the old] they wont know any different and the LA quietly change the environment within which they work and get less applications and the people lower down tell parents and put them off. Same answer as the delegated budgets.
Most of the pathfinder authorities are running around telling parents that they have pathfinder status because they are good. If you cross compare the authorities and the number of appeals you will find a different interpretation.

Also, teachers are not legally allowed to strike over this or almost anything else.

The only thing they're allowed to strike over is pay and conditions.

But aren't 'conditions' being expected to handle children with complex SEN without assistance or support?

Their terms and conditions, ie their employment contract, haven't changed.

Hmm, what about safety, stress levels, that kinda thing!?

Statements will be replaced by a single plan; school action and action plus may be replaced by a single sen category; draft bill in the Summer. All the exisiting rights remain in place until it actually happens - some Local Authorities are trying out the proposed system. I don't think anyone is expecting schools to cope with no assistance...

The bottom line is we don't know. The green paper was vague to the point of uselessness about how it was all going to be implemented. All the hard work was left to the pathfinders and many of the pathfinders have only just started while others are hitting major problems.

The oversimplification is that statements will be replaced by EHCPs, while kids needing "extra help" will be reclassified which will probably mean less money. EHCPs are supposed to have legal safeguards but pathfinders are having problems getting Health in particular to sign up to the plans and the plan has no equivalent of therapy in part 4 so the vexed question of how you get SALT and OT for kids that need it looks to be getting worse, not better.

The theory is that by making the system easier/more transparent, it's not worth the LA's while to contest provision where they will lose at tribunal and thus the huge sums of money wasted at tribunal can be spent on the kids in question. Which is why the whole overhaul is thought to be worthwhile - ie we can get more SEN provision out of the same or smaller SEN budget by cutting the legal fees. I've not heard any pathfinder feedback as to whether that is working or not.

Hothead - the Acdemies thing is messy, because it isn't "this is the rule for academies, and that is the rule for maintained schools". Every academy has it's own set of rules as it's part of the contract they sign with the LA and the contract is negotiable. Each one starts from the model docs on the DfE website: the original model documents had lots of loopholes re: SEN. Most are closed in the new model documents, so any case coming to court now (probably about an "old" academy) won't necessarily tell you how it will pan out for the majority.

IPSEA has some good info here www.ipsea.org.uk/Apps/Content/News/?id=450 on the Green Paper

On Pathfinder LAs www.ipsea.org.uk/news/hot-topics/sen-pathfinder-pilot-schemes-ipsea-briefing.aspx.aspx?dm_i=PWP,TLGP,4UJDGW,2F6IR,1

And have a survey for parents to record their experiences in Pathfinder LAs dmtrk.net/PWP-BJA/s2.aspx

OP - you make very valid points, but the £100 parenting voucher to attend a course run by a crony organisation will of course negate the need for all that expensive intervention in future

Oh god I had forgotten about that!

Any chance us lot could bid for the contract to deliver that training do you think?

Thanks TTTW

what worries me more about this (though we are fortunate(?) to have just received dx) is that the milder cases of for example ASD will not get dx as the system is now intertwined through the EHCP. That worry was presented to me by parent partnership! Personally I shudder at the thought that education can have a swaying opinion on a medical dx and I wouldn't have thought it possible but then the PP wasn't the only one that's said it to me now. Is this a real possibility?

They already do have a swaying opinion on Dx in the later years though.

It is WHY so many education professionals try to deny problems and convince parents not to go label seeking. Once they are IN the education system properly they can really halt. Dx.

Tbh that sounds like th current LGO. They appear to go back to the LA.

could we sue our LA if they do this, for instance if we can prove that they have harmed our children by their incompetence and so would be affecting their life chances by removing support?