Ofsted's Annual Report - findings for children with special educational needs (SEN)

Ofsted published its annual report on 1 December 2015. The report follows over 5000 inspections of schools, colleges and further education placements. In addition to the north/south divide (the gap between the performance of secondary schools in the North and Midlands secondary schools in the rest of the country) that has been highlighted by the media, there is also discussion about variations for children with SEN.

Regional differences

Unsurprisingly, pupils supported by School Action/School Action Plus (under the ‘old‘ SEN framework), are more than twice as likely not to continue with education or employment as their peers.  When looking at numbers of children identified as having SEN and their attainment outcomes, the report found the gap in attainment between the North/Midlands and the rest of the country wider for those with SEN. This is in addition to significant differences between individual local authorities. In London, Ofsted found that pupils with SEN, (those with Statements/Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) and without), had ‘dramatically higher’ educational attainment than the rest of the country.

Maintained v non-maintained special schools

Just under half pupils with Statements/EHCPs attend a special school, both maintained and non-maintained/independent schools. Findings as at 31 August 2015 show that 92% of maintained special schools were rated good or outstanding. This compares to 75% of schools in non-association independent special schools – a difference of 17%. The term ‘non-association’ appears to include academies and free schools. When excluding these from the figures, we see that a total of 69 non-maintained special schools were inspected of which 35% were judged outstanding and 48% good i.e. 83% good or outstanding.

Future inspections

Up until now maintained and non-maintained schools have been inspected against different inspection frameworks. From September 2015, they will be inspected under the same framework. It will be interesting to see whether the differences remain under a fully comparable framework.

An area that we have significant concerns about is the continued lack of engagement between Education, Health and Social Care. This is a particular problem in post-16 education. Ofsted’s findings show that sharing information between further education providers and Health and Social Care to be fragmented. Nationally, investment for post-16 learners with high needs was nearly £5.2 billion in 2014/15. “Worryingly, neither local authorities nor the providers and specialist services visited by inspectors in this survey were able to show that they evaluated whether their portion of this substantial investment was delivering the desired impact on the lives of these learners”.

A welcome initiative is that from May 2016, Ofsted will start new inspections jointly with the Care Quality Commission that will look at the effectiveness of local authorities in fulfilling their duties under the Children and Families Act 2014. The inspections will focus on how Education, Health and Social Care are working together to identify and meet needs. We look forward to the inspection reports.