ok, what can we actually do about this rubbish sen system

[kojackscat]

I read on here, day after day, about schools letting out kids down. Refusals to fill in ehcp forms, lies like ' you wont get a plan for behaviour problems ' and now I've just read 'ms schools don't do ehcp'

So, how do we get this system changed?
I know we are all exhausted from fighting for our children, but does anyone have the energy for one more fight?

We need publicity, petitions, lobbying, whatever else, to bring this to the publics attention.
We need teachers to be better trained in sen, sencos to have better understanding of the law, Las to have more/different duties, perhaps separate assessing and funding bodies.
Anyone up for starting a campaign on this? We cant let it continue to let our children down.

The new College of Teaching is likely to become influential and popular but I suspect like with many other teaching groups (unions etc.) they only use children with SEN to make a point, or to get sympathy for their plight with the papers, not because they are truly concerned. There concerns lie big enough for the 'average' child and consider SEN an optional add on, often.

Now that Ugger has promised to point others to this thread it is interesting that a couple of posts have now been deleted doncha think?

I am not a fundraiser but a brief look at a couple of likely organisations shows the following.

Rights to Education in Inclusive Settings from the Open Society

The Network for Social Change

I obviously don't know this policy area very well but it seems like this is an area that is ripe for more active citizen engagement and that funding bodies could be convinced of that. I'm not saying I know the answers, I'm just saying it is worth looking and keeping up hope.

In addition, there is the possibility of

• asking an organisation like Transparency International to do an investigation

• getting the Guardian/Independent/other newspaper to start a long running campaign about it

• getting an organisation like MySociety to build a database of the information we think is important for transparency (for instance, they have built a tool that allows easy access to all FOI requests)

I agree that there is potential though newspapers are unlikely to take it on.

Human Rights seems to be where its at, but that nearly fell into a ditch.

I'm not sure there is an organisation that would see the benefit to them of doing a database for SEN stuff but there is this group which has made a good start at local level - autismnorthyorks.blogspot.co.uk/