The downfall of the SEN reforms

The Inclusion Trust has published a report discussing the difficulties faced by children who are ‘pushed out’ of education. This coincides with Children’s Mental Health Week which is this week (16-22 February 2015).

The report highlights that children with special educational needs are over 6x more likely to face permanent exclusion and that children with mental health difficulties are 17xmore likely to receive a permanent exclusion. It refers to such children as being ‘pushed out’ and rightly condemns their loss as being “tragic”.

This is the latest in a string of reports and comments about special educational needs and support for disadvantaged children recently.

The special educational needs reforms took effect on 1 September 2014. This was following a lengthy period of consultation and build-up. From that date, the following issues have been raised:

• July – the Chair of the special needs committee of the Independent Schools Council warned that the reforms were a lost opportunity.

• 29 August – the Association of Educational Psychologist (AEP) highlighted that there were insufficient educational psychologists to enable the transition from Statement to EHCP.

• 8 September – the Council for Disabled People (CDP) highlighted that local authorities needed more time to implement the reforms.

• 9 September – the National Union of Teachers (NUT) expressed concern that the reforms were coming in too fast without sufficient support from government.

• 9 October – the Department for Education (DfE) highlighted that local authorities needed to get to grips with the reforms

• November – the DfE published a report setting out that the quality of Local Offers varied significantly. The Local Offer is a significant feature of the reforms and the failure to implement them fully is representative of the overall difficulties.

• 4 November – the DfE released a report which concluded that Personal Budgets (a significant aspect of the reforms) were in complete disarray. Like Local Offers, the failure to implement the Personal Budget suggested a significant difficulty with the reforms.

• 12 November – Edward Timpson, MP responsible for the reforms, took the remarkable step of writing to all local authorities to warn that they should slow down the process of transition to EHCPs and focus on quality rather than speed. This is particularly concerning given the warnings from AEP, CDP and NUT above.

• 20 November – Children’s Rights Alliance for England warned that the fall in budgets was threatening children’s rights

• 10 December – an Early Day Motion was commenced to raise concern that the reforms were not being implemented properly resulting in a failure to support children with special educational needs and provide them with support and guidance.

• 17 December – the DfE provided an extra £31.7 million to local authorities to help with implementing the reforms.

• 13 January – the Children’s Commissioner reported that children need more involvement in their services.

• 5 February – we reflected on the difficulties that budget cuts were causing local authorities with the implementation of the reforms.

• 11 February – the first Judicial Review relating to the new special educational needs regime was brought. This highlighted how local authorities were struggling to implement the reforms. The Court went so far as to grant the local authority in question some leeway in failing to comply with the requirements of the reforms because of the general difficulties being faced.

• 12 February – The Early Intervention Trust highlighted the need to invest more in proactive, rather than reactive, services for children, especially those with special educational needs.

• 17 February – a piece by the Guardian highlights that the reforms have been marred with confusion, misinformation and haste.

The above is only a taster of all the comments and reports that have been published. They are almost uniformly critical of how the reforms are taking effect. They suggest that local authorities are misinformed, underfunded and understaffed. This has resulted in transition being rushed, parents being given inaccurate advice and schools being expected to undertake additional work.

There are also substantial difficulties with health and social care services who are not engaging with the special educational needs reforms. Whether this is because they are not invited, or because they too do not really understand them, remains to be established.

Reforms always cause difficulties. Inertia is powerful and scepticism is always high especially in areas as sensitive and complex as special educational needs. However, these issues are not a result of either of these problems. They are real concerns with how the new system is bedding down.

Parents and schools now face a situation where they need to be informed. If a child is moved into the new system on the back of a poorly conduct transition they will lose out.

In a speech on 5 November Edward Timpson described the old regime as “… too disjointed, complex and adversarial”. It seems to me that the reforms have enhanced, rather than cured, these issues.