How to improve SEND without new legislation: Five ideas

The recent budget gave an extra £1 billion to fund SEND. That’s much needed given the number of councils who are reporting that finances are stretched to almost breaking point.

Whilst extra money for SEND is always welcome, this article focuses on other reform that could be implemented with low cost and without needing new laws (which might take years to bear fruit).

1. Publish where children attend school

This used to be published in local School Organisation Plans. If there are a lot of pupils in catchment attending other schools, leaders and governors can explore why that is?

Some answers are simple. For example:

• We share a catchment with a Catholic school.
• We’re a free school and have a very wide catchment.
• We can’t take all the pupils in our catchment because we are so oversubscribed.

But having data seen by governors makes it less easy for bad habits to begin (e.g. encouraging parents of SEND pupils to not apply for a school place at that school).

Such practice is not off-rolling. Instead, it is not on-rolling.

Pupil migration tables should also show SEND (i.e. how many SEND pupils in your catchment go elsewhere?). Inspectors can then look at this and then challenge where there are concerns about not-on-rolling.

2. Guide schools on how to better communicate their support for SEND

Some schools write SEND info reports that are harder to read than Stephen Hawkin’s book A Brief History of Time.

When we make SEND provision harder to read than the history of the universe, we exclude parents who struggle to read. This may be parents who:

• Have dyslexia (BDA say 10% of population)
• Speak English as a second language (1.8% of adults in England and Wales cannot speak English well or at all, ONS)
• Have low literacy levels (at least 15% of adults had literacy levels lower than an 11 year old in 2011 government survey)
• Missed out on a lot of schooling for one reason or another.

That’s not good enough for our fellow humans.

A school’s SEND policy and SEND information report should be combined and called something like ‘Welcome to SEND’. The content would stay the same, but it would be written so that parents can read it and it makes every effort to be presented in a way that makes parents want to pick it up. One way of viewing the booklet would be a Prospectus for SEND.

3. Make inflationary rises in Element 2 SEND funding so that fewer pupils need an EHCP

Element 2 funding is used to support SEND of pupils who don’t have an EHCP. It is given to schools and has an upper limit (i.e. a school could typically spend this amount before they’d ask the local council for extra funding via an EHCP).

• In 2014, Element 2 funding was £6000 per year.
• In 2024, Element 2 funding is £6000 per year.

That £6,000 is based on calculations from a report written in 2009. If inflation was added, that £6,000 would be over £9,300 by September 2024. That’s a reduction of £3,300 in the upper limit of money for a SEND pupil.

To put it another way: In the north of England, £3,300 equates to 55 minutes of TA support or intervention (per day). That time might be used for 1:1 early support so that an EHCP is not needed later. It’s not that EHCPs are bad – it’s that if you need one, your needs are severe and there’s a big gap between you and you peers. Wouldn’t we rather that pupils had support early and that gap never became so wide?

The freezing of Element 2 has resulted in more pupils needing EHCPs.

If SEND provision for their child is working well, many parents would not mind whether their child has an EHCP or not. They are more concerned about outcomes. Often this means that their child:

• Is doing learning well
• Is happy
• has friends
• is behaving well.

With an extra £3,300, the needs of many more pupils could be met without the struggles that many parents report when requesting an EHCP. However, we should also face the reality that this might not be achieved. If not, at least adding an annual inflationary rise from this year on would stop Element 2 funding falling further behind.

4. Identify and implement the best bits of the SEND & AP Improvement Plan

Lots of work has gone in by Department for Education civil servants, councils, school staff and families. Referred to as the Change Programme, it’s important to listen to feedback from schools and families and action the best bits.

For example, developing IT systems so that families can see the progress of EHCPs is welcome.

5. Consider how a national EHCP template will improve SEND outcomes

The roll out of any national EHCP would cost at least £6 million. Therefore, if it happens, it needs to be worth it and it needs to improve outcomes for SEND pupils.

Furthermore, a national template must be pupil and parent friendly. The current trial EHCP template is not. Therefore, it puts unneccesary barriers in front of some of those parents who we most want to support.

If we are developing a plan that helps people who have SEND, we must think how we can make it as inclusive of them and their parents (whilst also being compliant with the law). Some existing EHCP formats already attempt to do that. So, this isn’t as hard as it might at first seem.

Summary

1. Do: Publish where pupils go to school.
2. Do: Give guidance on how to write a great prospectus for SEND.
3. Do: Make inflationary rises in Element 2 funding.
4. Do: Roll out access to EHCP progress.
5. Do not: Roll out a new EHCP template unless it is pupil and family friendly and will improve outcomes.

Conclusion

This article was written to try and help to make a world that’s as fair as possible. These five ideas will never be a complete answer to some of the difficulties faced in SEND, but they would be a few steps onwards.

Thanks for reading.

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