I think the point I was trying to make, though I do waffle, is that some issue are very much an sen issue but a big chunk affects all children whether they have needs or not.
Most parents can't accurately gage how well their children are doing. Even worse now that the national curriculum levels are gone, not that they were that great. So how can they challenge the school? How can they know that something is wrong enough to go somewhere else? If you have a relative in hospital you can at least see if they get sicker or are still bleeding or are confused or their leg fell off. You can't really do that for education unless their is a crisis or you get to exams or testing in year 6, which again has it's own issues. Ofsted might waltz through every 5 or 10 years but what use is that to your individual child?
How many threads do we read here or read in papers where a child is bullied or assaulted in school but the parent hits a brick wall. They complain but in reality if the head at the school has made a decision you are buggered. You can make your complaint but it probably won't go anywhere because there is no one to hold them to account. The governing body often look to the head to guide them through and even if the situation was so dire that they sacked the head (like never happens) there are few candidates to replace them. Schools are like mini republics without any real oversight.
Even if illegal activities occur, parents have no real way of proving it without the staff who either committed it confessing or their colleagues telling on them, as the only other witnesses are children and more often than not sen children.
Maybe that's another bullet point
*a legal duty by all school staff to report illegal application of statements or just general illegalness
I think the advent of the right to choose schools has also meant heads feel they can tell people to go find another school if they don't like how they do things. No real effort to accommodate. Just 'we do it this way if you don't like it, get lost'. Not that the illusion of school choice is a reality for many and certainly not for children with sen.
Then there is the issue of league tables. Not only do they give a false impression of literally every school, they make taking on children with sen less desirable because they cost money and pull down the average. Children just below the benchmark get more attention and even though we are supposed to be looking at how much progress all children make to ensure everyone succeeds, if you have such low expectations of sen children then it matters not one jot. If a child is being failed at infant level so they do badly on their ks1 assessments those assessments will follow them through until gcse. Even if they are doing better and thriving, those numbers will mean that they are seen as doing well rather than just plodding along, they won't get into booster groups if needed because they will already be 'exceeding expectations' .
*get rid of league tables. Schools should be able to justify why a child is where they are and it should be part of a written record that follows the child as a legal requirement like hospital notes.
I'm not advocating that schools should be handed over to parents so they can take charge of everything. Teachers are trained to do a job and they should be allowed to do it. However, parents and other stakeholders need to be able to see, and see quickly, when there are issues and they need robust organisations to help them when things go wrong.