Paces

IPSEA warns of loss of legal protections in draft SEN Code & Regulations

28 March 2013 

IPSEA has published a briefing on the potential loss of existing legal protections for children with SEN in the indicative SEN Code and draft Regulations. 

There's a downloadable briefing from IPSEA.

Children and Families Bill - who is it for?

Let me declare a specific interest. If you have ever read almost any posting on this blog, you will be aware that my special interest is the education of children with (under current arrangements) "statements of special educational need"; specifically, children with motor disorders (cerebral palsy etc).  It is from this perspective that I read and comment upon "the most radical change in SEN in 30 years" - the Children and Families Bill now progressing through Parliament.

The national charity, Scope, does not share this specific interest. Explaining Scope's perspective on the Bill, Carena Rogers, Scope's Public Policy Manager writes on their blog ("Will new health duty benefit all families with disabled children?"). "We want all disabled children, young people and their families to benefit from the Children and Families Bill. We are asking the government to ensure that local authorities promote provision of inclusive and accessible universal services that all families can use."  

There is, it seems to me, an increasing confusion developing around (and maybe inherent in) this Bill and whom it is for, partly because of the clear and strengthening call to widen the beneficiary range of this Bill. It is in many respects a compelling call and I do not, with the above example, seek to point any sort of finger at Scope, other than as an illustration of the case being made. A reading, for instance, of the evidence presented to the Public Bill Committee - Children and Families Bill hearing last Tuesday afternoon, 5th March, illustrates the same case and, as I sense it, a confusion over categories and beneficiaries and the original intent of the Bill. (A case can be made that the Bill, in covering other ground than SEN creates its own confusion and encourages expectation, not further helped by entitling it the 'Childrena nd Families Bill').

My concern at this moment - and I shall think more and more carefully as the Bill progresses through Parliament - is that in calling for widening the beneficiary reach of this Bill, the risk is that the most vulnerable group - children with statements of special educational need and their families - may not be as fully served as they should.

To take but one example. The proposal in the Bill and in the earlier Green Paper to replace the current "statement" with a single 'Education, Health and Care Plan' is indeed a radical change and one that has been broadly welcomed by all Parties. That is to say, the new EHC Plan is in essence, an education plan, a plan to do with the education of a child. The announcement by the Minister, reported in Scope's blog, to place a duty on clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) to guarantee the funding of health care services where these are part of the EHC Plan - which until the announcement was not the case - significantly improves one of the key weaknesses in the Bill and is to be welcomed. Yes, parents may well continue to have to argue for what is included in their child's EHC Plan, but they will no longer have to argue for it to be funded once it is included. 

The challenges facing parents that remain, as the Scope blog makes clear, may only become apparent once the detail is known, "so the battles over deciding such things as whether help to eat lunch, or occupational health to improve posture are health or educational needs will remain."  But if this Bill, in this part, is for children who currently have "statements of special educational need", our focus surely needs to be on identifying these and other like issues and driving the case home to politicians, and not being tempted to weaken our effort and water down the challenge in seeking to widen those beneficiaries to whom it applies. 

This is where my special interest comes in. Scope's two examples of what might still remain outside the reach of the EHC Plan are instructive: "help to eat lunch, or .... to improve posture".  

Eating lunch and improving posture for children with motor disorders are always educational. (I say 'always' not 'only'. You might make a case for them being education and health but they are not solely health matters. They may be health matters too. They are always education matters.)  Like walking, most children, with maybe some minimal assistance, progress through ordinary development stages. They do not need to learn - which is to say, to be taught, which is to say "education" - as motor disordered children do. In short, I would like to see the emphasis of the case being made as the Bill progresses through Parliament - the evidencing before committees, the campaigning in social and other media, the speeches by MPs - to focus on what should be in the new radical EHC Plan and less upon whether the Bill should serve a wholly different and additional purpose by including children who do not have special educational needs. Logicaly, if the case be made that disabled children without special educational needs be included within the legislation and so entitled to an EHC Plan, then the case could also be made for those children who have social care needs without special educational needs.  

So, not "who is the Bill for?" but what, in an Education, Health and Care Plan, is "education" and what is not is the truly radical battleground for those with special educational needs and their families.

 

 

A new one on me - the European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education

As I say, a new one on me; an agency I've not heard of before: The European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education. Have you?

It is, it says, "an independent and self-governing organisation, established by our member countries to act as their platform for collaboration in the field of special needs education."   I'm not sure what "independent" really means in this context as it is "maintained by the Ministries of Education in our member countries" which seems to include most European countries and a couple more besides.  The UK (England) representative (Scotland, Wales, and NI each have their own representative) is Nigel Fulton, a "Team Leader" with DfE.

The 'About Us' page was last modified on 17 November 2009, so does not necessailly reflect the change in British Government in 2010 and current government policy. There, it describes its work as:

We facilitate the collection, processing and transfer of European level and country specific information and offer our member countries the opportunity to learn from each other through different types of knowledge and experience exchange.

Our short and long term work programmes reflect both our member countries’ priorities and agreed EU policies regarding learners with special educational needs and the promotion of their full participation within mainstream education and training. (My emphasis)

In other words, one might reasonably conclude, this is the European Agency for the Promotion of Inclusion by National Departments of Education. Something quite different from what attracted me when I came across its (arguably misleading) title.

IPSEA: Children and Families Bill - call to action

The folowing is taken from an email from IPSEA, with thanks for the valuable work they are undertaking.

Children & Families Bill - take action

Step 1: Understand the impact of Part 3 of the Bill

IPSEA needs your help with protecting children’s rights to a proper education. We have created 3 documents to help you understand what the Children & Families (C & F) Bill means for children/young people with special educational needs (SEN) and/or a disability.

Click here to see IPSEA's C & F Bill documents.

Step 2: Take action to influence Part 3 of the Bill

• Sign IPSEA’s petition - once this is live the link will be here
• Complete IPSEA’s short on-line survey
• Give feedback via Public Reading of the Bill - closes 26 Feb
• Write to or meet with your MP 
• Let IPSEA keep you informed so that you can inform others

MaSt - What's more ... Systemic failure of children with SEN statements

“…. there will always be a group of pupils who – however they are labelled – are likely to have difficulties in accessing the everyday classroom learning experience.”  (The Making a Statement project – final report” Webster & Blatchford, Institute of Education February 2013.) 

I looked at this report in my previous posting. It is an interesting report, worth, in my view, the time spent in reading it. But ….  And it is the “buts” that I keep coming back to.

Take the statement above, which appears in the concluding paragraph of an early introductory section “The policy context”. Is it just me, or is that an odd sort of statement?

One obvious “but” is this: “But, hang on a minute, if ‘there will always be a group of pupils’ who ‘have difficulties in accessing the everyday classroom learning experiences” is it not possible that the ‘everyday classroom’ is not the learning environment they should be in? That, of course, is the basis of the argument for special schools.

Beyond the obvious, there is a bigger “but”. What strikes me as odd is the way the statement appears to ‘blame the pupils’; the pupils, it is said, “are likely to have difficulties”. It’s in the verb, the ‘having’ of difficulties.

Is not the truth of the matter that if any pupils ‘face’ or ‘experience’ difficulties,  it is the teacher, the pedagogy, the curriculum, that is the ‘difficulty’?

As with the lack of training provided to teachers of children with statements of special educational need, which the authors acknowledge but which fails to influence the main conclusion of their research, so here in this perspective on the responsibility for the interaction, the ‘elephant in the room’ is missed entirely: it’s the teachers, their lack of training, their limited understanding of specific disabilities, of alternative pedagogies and appropriate curricular arrangements, that should be concerning us. 

------------------

Footnote:

The ‘elephant in the room’ is something of a cliché. A more recent, similar expression of the same might be the ‘dancing gorilla’. Take a look and have a smile.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I looked at this report in my previous posting. It is an interesting report, worth, in my view, the time spent in reading it. But ….  And it is the “buts” that I keep coming back to.

 

Take the statement above, which appears in the concluding paragraph of an early introductory section “The policy context”. Is it just me, or is that an odd sort of statement?

 

One obvious “but” is this: “But, hang on a minute, if ‘there will always be a group of pupils’ who ‘have difficulties in accessing the everyday classroom learning experiences” is it not possible that the ‘everyday classroom’ is not the learning environment they should be in? That, of course, is the basis of the argument for special schools.

 

Beyond the obvious, there is a bigger “but”. What strikes me as odd is the way the statement appears to ‘blame the pupils’; the pupils, it is said, “are likely to have difficulties”. It’s in the verb, the ‘having’ of difficulties.

 

Is not the truth of the matter that if any pupils ‘face’ or ‘experience’ difficulties,  it is the teacher, the pedagogy, the curriculum, that is the ‘difficulty’?

 

As with the lack of training provided to teachers of children with statements of special educational need, which the authors acknowledge but which fails to influence the main conclusion of their research, so here in this perspective on the responsibility for the interaction, the ‘elephant in the room’ is missed entirely: it’s the teachers, their lack of training, their limited understanding of specific disabilities, of alternative pedagogies and appropriate curricular arrangements, that should be concerning us. 

 

 

The ‘elephant in the room’ is something of a cliché. A more recent, similar expression of the same might be the ‘dancing gorilla’. Take a look: http://bit.ly/12fCFxa

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I looked at this report in my previous posting. It is an interesting report, worth, in my view, the time spent in reading it. But ….  And it is the “buts” that I keep coming back to.

 

Take the statement above, which appears in the concluding paragraph of an early introductory section “The policy context”. Is it just me, or is that an odd sort of statement?

 

One obvious “but” is this: “But, hang on a minute, if ‘there will always be a group of pupils’ who ‘have difficulties in accessing the everyday classroom learning experiences” is it not possible that the ‘everyday classroom’ is not the learning environment they should be in? That, of course, is the basis of the argument for special schools.

 

Beyond the obvious, there is a bigger “but”. What strikes me as odd is the way the statement appears to ‘blame the pupils’; the pupils, it is said, “are likely to have difficulties”. It’s in the verb, the ‘having’ of difficulties.

 

Is not the truth of the matter that if any pupils ‘face’ or ‘experience’ difficulties,  it is the teacher, the pedagogy, the curriculum, that is the ‘difficulty’?

 

As with the lack of training provided to teachers of children with statements of special educational need, which the authors acknowledge but which fails to influence the main conclusion of their research, so here in this perspective on the responsibility for the interaction, the ‘elephant in the room’ is missed entirely: it’s the teachers, their lack of training, their limited understanding of specific disabilities, of alternative pedagogies and appropriate curricular arrangements, that should be concerning us. 

 

 

The ‘elephant in the room’ is something of a cliché. A more recent, similar expression of the same might be the ‘dancing gorilla’. Take a look: http://bit.ly/12fCFxa

New report points to systemic failure in teaching of children with statements of SEN

I have been reading (and re-reading)a new research report from the Institute of Education: “The Making a Statement project Final Report.  A study of the teaching and support experienced by pupils with a statement of special educational needs in mainstream primary schools” by Rob Webster and Peter Blatchford.

The Executive Summary of the report concludes:

On basis of the evidence from our research, we suggest that the new EHCPs avoid expressing support for pupils in terms of hours, and instead specify the pedagogical processes and strategies that will help meet carefully defined outcomes. Furthermore, we recommend that setting personal budgets is dependent on the outcomes specified in the EHCP in order to avoid schools making decisions about support based predominantly on the resources available.

There is in this report much that raises my hackles but it is not my purpose here to enter that debate.  No, my purpose is to consider how some of the evidence might be supportive of the work we do at Paces and others do elsewhere: totally without scruple to use this research to our advantage. Given the evident ex cathedra support of inclusion, the authors might be surprised to see their work used to further education in a special school, and conductive education at that!

The research reported on is important because, as the authors state – and worth reading for this reason alone – “there is surprisingly little research that documents, in a systematic way, the support experienced by pupils with SEN, and specifically, those with statements”.

The most startling statement in the whole report comes on page 3:

Most teachers reported having had no training on meeting the needs of pupils with high levels of SEN, indicating failings in initial teaching training.

On page 56, in the section headed Preparedness: Training and guidance” the authors state:

… over a third of all teachers and TAs interviewed – said that they had had no specific training to help them support the needs of the statemented pupil they supported/had in their class.

One teacher who was interviewed as part of the research said (and is quoted presumably as being typical):

I’ve actually been on almost no special needs courses since I was trained thirteen years ago. So no; I’ve come into it very blind.

Another is quoted as saying:

“I did a four year teacher BA instead of a PGCE, but in my placements, I didn’t come across SEN children really at all”.

Commenting, (I can find that this observation has no impact on the authors’ conclusions from their research) that this level of professional ignorance indicates “failings in initial teacher training” seems to me as fine an example as may be found of British understatement, bordering on the euphemistic and myopic.

Contrast that with the training that Conductors bring to the classroom.

We might assume that despite the failure of their training to prepare them for the classroom, teachers would ensure that when they get there they familiarise themselves thoroughly with their pupils.

Not so. Whilst nearly a quarter of teachers participating in the research (12 out of 56) “claimed that they had an understanding of the pupil’s statement and/or annual review” exactly as many said they had “no understanding of these documents” (page 56). The rest were presumably somewhere in between; having somewhat less than “an understanding”. Frankly, I find it incredible that more than three-quarters of teachers of children with a statement of special educational needs, subject to an annual review, can in any sense be said to be doing enough without, in the author’s words “an understanding” of either document.

Contrast that with Conductors’ understanding of a pupil’s disability and the lengths conductors go to in assessing a pupil on first meeting.

Let the authors – in their words, not mine – sum up this state of affairs in mainstream schools:

Many staff were unsure how to best deal with the challenges and sometimes complex difficulties posed by pupils with statements. Most teachers reported having had no training on meeting the specific needs of pupils with statements, and only a few had received some general training on SEN. In our view, this indicates a failing of initial teacher training. This lack of knowledge seemed to be a contributing factor in teachers’ lesson and task preparation; their planning rarely extended to cover the learning needs of pupils with a statement. (p71)

The Making a Statement project set out to collect systematic data on the educational experiences of pupils with a statement of SEN in mainstream primary schools. (p73)

This was achieved through the collection of observation data based on many hundreds of hours spent in classrooms over the 2011/12 academic year. The observations results were supported with detailed case studies, which drew together data from interviews, documentation and researchers’ field notes. The findings from the observations and case studies led to the summation of the main messages from the study in terms of five key, overarching themes. (p73)

Three of these themes and some of these main messages are (p69ff):

The appropriateness and quality of pedagogy:

Pupils with statements often receive a less appropriate and lower quality pedagogical experience compared to their average attaining peers.

The quality of pedagogy is unlikely to be sufficient to narrow the attainment gap between pupils with statements and their peers.

The extent of knowledge:

There are considerable gaps in teachers’ and TAs’ knowledge concerning meeting the needs of pupils with statements. 

The quality of leadership and management:

There are concerns about the ways in which schools prioritise meeting the needs of pupils with statements.

The authors of “The Making a Statement project Final Report” have observed and reported the systemic failure in the teaching of children with statements of special educational needs in primary schools. 

Maybe in our conversations with local authorities and with Tribunals – and in our lobbying of MPs as the Children and Families Bill makes its way through Parliament, presaging the “most radical change in SEN for 30 years” - we should use this report to point out this failure and, conversely, what conductors and conductive education have to offer.

-------------------------------------------

Institute of Education Press Release: Pupils with most serious special needs spend too much time apart from their classmates and teachers

Institute of Education Blog: Worlds apart? How pupils with special needs lead a life away from their teachers and classmates

You might also like to take a look at how the Times Educational Supplement reported this research and the comment on that by Tom Bennett on his blog The Behaviour Guru: When everyone’s special, no one is: how inclusion went sour.

Children & Families Bill published: for SEN see Section 3

The following is from IPSEA:

Children & Families Bill published 
IPSEA has issued a Press Release about the new Children & Families Bill. 

At 5pm on Monday 4th February, the Children & Families Bill was presented in Parliament. The Bill was published today. Section 3 of this Bill is based on the draft SEN provisions that IPSEA analysed in October 2012. 

Our Press Release has some initial observations. Edward Timpson, the Minister responsible for SEN, has written a letter explaining some of the changes made to the draft provisions. You can read his letter here.
 
You can view the Bills' progress through Parliament here. IPSEA will produce a thorough analysis of the Bill in due course. We will let you know once this is completed.  

The links kindly provided by IPSEA are an invaluable resource. The IPSEA Press Release generally welcomes the legislation on SEN and outlines IPSEA's initial response.

You can follow IPSEA (@IPSEAcharity) on Twitter and on Facebook. 

"Preparing for Adulthood" is tracking responses to publication of Bill on their website.

The Organisation - reform of public services according to Jonty Olliff-Cooper of A4E

The Organisation "would provide a single source of advice and support, and help you with all your issues, an organisation which understood you, your family, and the place where you grew up; one that would stand by you for the long term; treat you like a human, not a number; and back you to build a different future for yourself."

 

On this blog, I have rarely, if ever, commented on wider political issues, whether small 'p' or capital 'p'.  But this vision of "public services" makes me feel a chill.  

The source of this distopian vision is an essay in a collection of essays from a group of Conservatives calling themselves Bright Blue.  The essay in which it appears is entitled "Better, cheaper, more human - building progressive Conservative public services". It's author is Jonty Olliff-Cooper, Director of Policy and Strategy at A4E.

I do not, here, make any party political point. Whether "The Organisation" (my capitals) is a private company or the State itself, is not my point. Rather, as I read this, I wonder: what problem with Society is this an answer to? What would life be like if Olliff-Cooper's "Organisation" were considered a normal part of wider society?  ("Trust me. My name's Jonty. I'm from The Organisation. I'm here to help you.") 

My thanks to "Watching A4: Keeping an eye on a company whose business is Government contracts" for drawing attention to this essay and its author. 

LATER: later in the evening I came across this which points to a different kind of society, a more hopefiul one, differently organised by people to achieve local public service ends: Towards Peer Production in Public Services - Cases from Finland.

-----------------

Who is the author? This from the RSA website:

"Jonty began his career in the private sector as a strategy consultant at the Boston Consulting Group, specialising in retail strategy. Since moving to public policy, Jonty has worked in a variety of strategy functions across Westminster and Whitehall, including at the Department for International Development, the Cabinet Office, ThinkPublic and as an adviser in the Conservative Party Policy Unit, where he led on technology, innovation and public service reform issues.

Prior to joining A4e, Jonty was head of the Progressive Conservatism Project at the think-tank Demos. Outside A4e, Jonty is an executive member of the Bright Blue political network and an associate at Demos, and sits on the steering group of the Big Society Network."

 

Is potential "spotted" as Les Ebdon says or created?

The Director of the Office for Fair Access, Les Ebdon, seems to think potential university students can be "spotted" at the age of seven. I find such a view in such a senior public servant unutterable sad, if not worse.

In an interview published in yesterday's Sunday Times (£wall), it seems Les Ebdon has been saying that "universities must begin working with children as young as seven, especially those from poorer families, to 'spot their potential', track them as they grow up and prepare them for the challenges of being a university student". Apparently this includes children dressing up and playing 'mini-graduation ceremonies': "quite a few universities have a cupboard full mini gowns and mortar boards tucked away somewhere, because they have graduation ceremonies for young children after working with them in schools".  Liverpool University's scheme is called the "Professor Fluffy Project".

Asked "can you really spot at the age of seven whether a child is gifted enough to apply for Oxford or Cambridge?", Les Ebdon responds "Oooh, yes, especially in maths and things like that". 

"... and things like that". Professor Fluffy, indeed. Does this fellow have any hard evidence whatsoever that this stuff has any basis in any reality?

What this forcefully reminds me of is my first days at Grammar School in 1957. Boys whose "potential" at football, or cricket and athletics in summer, was "spotted" were given extra coaching. Those who weren't "spotted" did not get the extra coaching. Guess which boys from Year 2 to Year 6 went on to represent the school?

Football clubs still do it, of course. Scouring junior soccer leagues for "potential" and then signing children up for intensive coaching schemes. Few make it to playing for a Premier League team.

Personally, I find the idea that "potential" is somehow innate, waiting to be "spotted" in children just 7 years old (or younger, or older, take your pick), presumes an utterly negative view not just of education (of learning and teaching and upbringing) but of Humanity in general.  

 

"Risk averse civil servants" and the struggle for radical change in special needs education

A story caught my eye in today's Sunday Times (£wall) that may have passed you by.

Under the headline "No, minister: scornful mandarins quietly kill government policies", it seems that a senior civil servant, one David Owen, has won a tribunal case for unfair dismissal. He was apparently sacked after blowing the whistle on civil service colleagues' attempts to obstruct a ministerial policy proposal.

After winning his tribunal case, David Owen reportedly spoke of the "dismissive attitudes" of some civil servants, "warning that risk averse officals are blocking potentially valuable policies" and that they "placed excessive emphasis on risks associated with implementing the policy" ... "rather than setting out the risks and seeking ways to overcome them". 

This comes just a week after the widely reported charge from former Prime Ministerial policy chief advisor, Steve Hilton, who spoke in similar terms of the civil service and civil servants.

What has this to do with SEN? Well, for my colleagues and I, this is how 2013 has begun.

1. Governance: a letter from DfE requiring us, in relation to our non-maintained special school, to confirm that our governance arrangements conform with 2011 Regulations, ensuring our alignment with various aspects of the governance of local authority maintained schools, as if there had been: no discussion during the past couple of years of school governance generally (broadly, between 'representative' and 'skills' models of goevrnance); nothing learned from the newer governance models of Academies and Free Schools; or that a review of governance of NMSSs was due. If we cannot confirm that our governance documents comply with 2011 Regulation, we must now submit our governance documents to DfE for scrutiny. Fortunately, we shall be writing to DfE confirming that our documents do indeed comply. But why this? Why now? Aren't there more important matters of SEN policy for over-stretched civil servants to be occupying their time with?

2. Finance: a new Funding Framework is to be introduced in April 2013. Aside from the fact that this was initially described as an "Interim Funding Framework", the word "interim" now apparently dropped; aside from the fact that it is being introduced utterly separately and at least 18 months before the SEN draft legislation is due to be enacted; aside from the fact that the Framework introduces 3 funding streams (i. central government fixed £10k per pupil; ii. local authority negotiated per individual pupil; iii. central government routed via local authority fixed but not yet agreed amount in respect of previous 'NMSS grant')  where there were previously 2 (i. fee charged by school to local authority per pupil; ii. 'NMSS grant'); the introduction of this new funding framework has not only created a level of uncertainty as to (a) how it will work, (b) whether the figures will be resolved so as not to disadvantage schools and pupils compared with current funding arrangements and (c) whether the flow of funds will not impact on cashflow in April and May but now, we hear, local authorities, no more than ourselves, have a thorough understanding of the new Framework. This in January, just three months before it is to be implemented. 

3. Assessment and Funding: I have been re-reading "Special Educational Needs: Assessment and Funding" the 10th Report of the House Commons Education Select Committee, chaired by Barry Sheerman MP and published in October 2007. This report strongly recommeded the separation of assessment and funding and ties this recommendation explicitly "to enhance parental satisfaction with the way in which special needs are identified and addressed". In the same year, the Conservative Party commission on special educational needs Chaired by Lord Lingfield (then Sir Robert Balchin) reported in broadly similar terms. These are clear and strong recommendations; the concerns they address are widely shared.  Why, then, 5 years and a new coalition government later, is the draft legislation on SEN so hesitant on these matters? Why are we aleady hearing what sounds like a watering down of these recommendations? 

Now take all these areas together. Governance. Funding framework. Assessment & Funding. Parental preference and confidence. Key elements in the radical reform of special needs and education. Surely this is not evidence in support of the Sunday Times headline and the Treasury whistleblower, David Owen's view?

Cui bono? In whose interests, the chaos and confusion?  The next 18 months will reveal whether we are witnessing real policy-driven change in special needs education or something else. I hope the former. However, unusually, those who know me as an optimist will say, I am increasingly less confident that the promised benefits to children and parents will be allowed to materialise.