Memorandum submitted by the Confederation
of Children's Service Managers (ConFEd)
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 The Confederation of Children's Services
Managers (ConfEd) is an umbrella organisation representing Directors
of Education and Children's Services, education and children's
services officers, advisers/inspectors and school governor support
services in England and Wales.
1.2 This submission is based upon evidence
provided by the regional representatives who form our national
Special Educational Needs Committee. To a considerable degree,
therefore, the following comments reflect the longstanding experiences
and views of those Local Authority staff most involved in applying
the statutory framework for special needs on behalf of local children
and their parents. The Education and Skills Committee is asked
to note that there is little confidence amongst these key practitioners
in the present national framework. We believe that it is ripe
for review and reform in the light of the positive recent developments
in Children's Services practice and the Every Child Matters Green
Paper.
1.3 ConfEd welcomes this Inquiry. It is
timely and potentially very helpful following the rather heated,
but not always well informed, national debate instigated last
June when Baroness Mary Warnock once again raised her fundamental
concerns about the current statutory arrangements for children
with special educational needs.
1.4 ConfEd supports Baroness Warnock's criticisms
about the present system for assessing and issuing Statements
of Special Educational Needs. This system has indeed tended to
raise rather than remove barriers to learning. It has also had
unintended consequences in increasing bureaucracy over the years
as the means of securing additional provision for individual children
with complex needs. The current statutory special needs framework,
which has been in place since 1983, has not turned out to be a
success, nor has it proved to be very supportive of real inclusion
for children and their parents. We would welcome, therefore, the
initiation of the "radical review" which Baroness Warnock
has suggested should be undertaken by an independent committee
of inquiry akin to the one which she herself chaired in the late
1970s.
1.5 Education and children's services professionals
remain supportive of the Government's commitment to securing the
most inclusive arrangements possible for children who have additional
needs. In reality, whilst there has been a gradual decline in
the overall number of special schools in recent years, that is
not reflected in an equivalent reduction in the number of pupils
supported by such specialist provision. Bearing in mind the reducing
number of primary age pupils across the country, there has not,
therefore, been a wholesale move towards children with special
needs being "forced" to attend mainstream schools inappropriately
as a consequence of special school provision within Local Authorities.
Nonetheless, the Government needs to support Local Authorities
by allowing them to retain adequate central resources to deliver
the provision required.
1.6 We would urge the Committee to seek
up to date statistics on these matters from the Department for
Education and Skills rather than to rely upon the often over-stated
rhetoric of those who are either strongly for or against Government
policies in this critical area of the education system.
1.7 This submission will refer to a number
of key national documents which we believe should be central to
the Committee's Inquiry. These have been listed at the end of
this paper.
2. SECURING INCLUSIVE
EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES
FOR ALL
CHILDREN
2.1 ConfEd continues to support the far
reaching principles first set out by the Government in the Green
Paper "Excellence for all Children: Meeting Special Educational
Needs" of October 19971. The Green Paper's section on "Increasing
Inclusion" stated that:
"the ultimate purpose of SEN provision is
to enable young people to flourish in adult life. There are therefore
strong educational, as well as social and moral, grounds for educating
children with SEN with their peers. We aim to increase the level
and quality of inclusion within mainstream schools, whilst protecting
and enhancing specialist provision for those who need it"
(page 43).
2.2 The Green Paper went on to state that
"inclusion is a process, not a fixed state. By inclusion,
we mean not only that pupils with SEN should wherever possible
receive their education in a mainstream school, but also that
they should join fully with their peers in the curriculum and
life of the school" (page 44).
2.3 ConfEd believes that recent Government
policy on special educational needs reflects very well the original
definition of "functional integration" provided by the
Warnock Report of 19782—"this is achieved where the
locational and social association of children with special needs
with their fellows leads to joint participation in educational
programmes" (page 101).
2.4 More recently, in November 2001 the
Department for Education and Skills issued extremely positive
and balanced statutory guidance on "Inclusive Schooling:
Children with Special Educational Needs"3 which we would
commend to the Committee. This guidance document, which accompanied
the equally constructive and inclusive Special Educational Needs
and Disability Act, 2001, provided practical support for schools,
Local Authorities and others in the development of their cultures,
policies and practices to include pupils.
2.5 In addition to some excellent key principles,
the statutory "Inclusive Schooling" guidance indicated
that "schools, supported by Local Education Authorities and
others should actively seek to remove the barriers to learning
and participation that can hinder or exclude pupils with special
educational needs. Schools and Local Education Authorities that
are successful in including pupils with special educational needs
meet those needs in a positive and proactive way. They also approach
inclusion as part of their overall improvement strategy. Inclusion
is far more than just about the location of a child's school placement"
(page 2).
2.6 We have quoted liberally from these
key DfES documents because of the cautious and balanced approach
to inclusion which they provide, and which ConfEd strongly supports.
They give us a helpfully, child-centred and practical national
framework for maximising the educational opportunities and consequent
life chances of children and young people who have additional
learning needs.
2.7 It is noteworthy that the best definitions
of inclusion emphasise the importance of all children belonging
to schools which address their very particular individual needs.
Such truly personalised learning depends upon a positive school
ethos which celebrates diversity and gives equal access and opportunity
to those who happen to have special educational needs and/or disabilities.
This is well reflected in the Government's current strategy for
special educational needs, "Removing Barriers to Achievement".
Increasingly, these central characteristics of educational inclusion
are being evaluated by OfSTED during inspections of schools. This
is most welcome.
2.8 Whilst they are broadly supportive of
the present inclusive principles which inform Government policy
on special educational needs, education service professionals
do have significant concerns about the unintended and often non-inclusive
impact of the present statutory framework for identifying, assessing
and providing for special educational needs. Sadly, decisions
of the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal and conflicting
national policy priorities, such as the undue emphasis still being
given to school performance tables and the autonomy of individual
schools within the Government's Five Year Strategy, often cut
across the achievement of inclusive outcomes for children who
have additional needs.
3. KEY NATIONAL
ISSUES
3.1 Reviews of Progress
We would commend to the Committee the report
of the Department for Education and Skills' new SEN Adviser Team
of June 20054. This provides a valuable national overview based
upon initial visits to all Local Authorities in England between
September 2004 and February this year. The report reveals that
significant progress has been made across the country since the
publication earlier in 2004 of the Government's strategy for SEN,
"Removing Barriers to Achievement"5. Similarly the report
"Special Educational Needs and Disability: Towards Inclusive
Schools"6, which was published by the Office for Standards
in Education (Ofsted) late last year, provided a most helpful
overview of national progress towards inclusive opportunities.
It is based upon visits undertaken by inspectors between May and
November 2003. We would ask the Committee to note in particular
the following findings which unfortunately did not appear to inform
the media debate on inclusion last summer:
"i) The Government's revised inclusion
framework has contributed to a growing awareness to the benefits
of inclusion, and response to it has led to some improvement in
practice.
ii) The framework has had little effect as
yet on the proportion of pupils with SEN in mainstream schools,
or on the range of needs for which mainstream schools cater. There
has been an increase in the number of pupils placed in Pupil Referral
Units and independent schools" (page 5).
3.2 The Current Legislative Framework
There is a grave danger of the stand alone statutory
system for special educational needs, which has been in place
since the Education Act 1981 came into effect on 1 April 1983,
continuing largely unaltered. Meanwhile, otherwise welcome and
fundamental changes are being sought in securing timely and integrated
multi-agency support for individuals in need and their families.
Given that virtually all other aspects of the education system
in England and Wales have changed significantly since the mid-1980s,
it really is quite remarkable that much of the special needs legislation
set out in the 1981 Act remains fundamentally unchanged within
the successor Education Act of 1996.
3.3 Special Educational Needs and Disability
Tribunal
3.3.1 One of the great anachronisms within
the present statutory framework for special educational needs,
and the Government's associated, commitment to effective educational
inclusion, is the role and impact of the Special Educational Needs
and Disability Tribunal. In spite of the best efforts of Tribunal
members, it is quite clear that the Tribunal has become a vehicle
for the most articulate parents to seek to secure additional resources
for their children.
3.3.2 Local authorities are working hard,
in accordance with Government policy to reduce the overall need
for Statements of Special Educational Needs, and to avoid the
use of expensive provision in the private sector wherever possible.
This is in line with the inclusive principles set out in "Excellence
for All Children". However, the Tribunal in recent years
has been increasingly over-ruling Local Authority decisions. This
has resulted in the small minority of parents able to face the
rigours of Tribunal hearings, supported by the significant increase
in parental rights of appeal since 2001, being able to exercise
their rights effectively but at the expense of the majority of
parents whose children also have additional needs.
3.3.3 The Special Educational Needs and
Disability Tribunal, on the basis of written evidence and advocacy
at legalistic appeal hearings, is empowered to make decisions
which for an individual child could cost the taxpayer up to £1
million in lifetime educational costs for an out-County school
placement. This makes no moral or economic sense. It is quite
clear to us that a simpler, more parent friendly and less legalistic
system of local appeals is urgently required. This must allow
for a balanced and reasonable consideration of an individual's
needs within the context of cash-limited resources and local policies
and provision.
3.4 Integrated Multi-agency Working
3.4.1 The Confederation of Children's Services
Managers is highly committed to the Government's Every Child
Matters: "Change for Children" agenda. However,
we do have significant concerns about the lack of emphasis evident
so far within national developments relating to the safeguarding
and well-being of children, to the existing separate statutory
framework for the 20% or so of all children and young people who
have special educational needs and/or disabilities.
3.4.2 ConfEd believes that the five outcomes
for children which are central to the Every Child Matters
framework will prove to be a powerful lever for improved multi-agency
provision on behalf of individual children and their families.
However, the initial experience of the new Joint Area Reviews
into Children's Services Authorities suggests that the present
inspection framework will need some revision. This is essential
if such reviews are to reflect more fully the particular impact
of local services upon the outcomes for children and young people
who have "learning difficulties and disabilities." This
is a new Ofsted term which needs clearer definition.
3.4.3 The inspection framework should ensure
that the quality of work for children across each of the five
outcomes properly includes children with learning difficulties
and disabilities. This can only be achieved if the key judgements
in the inspection framework reflect the five outcomes for children
as opposed to more traditional measures of Local Authority efficiency
such as timescales for the completion of statutory assessments
and Statements of Special Educational Needs.
3.5 National Health Service Priorities and
Provision
3.5.1 A long term issue which cuts across
the best intentions of both national and local government in this
field is the lack of priority given to children by the National
Health Service when it comes to improvement targets and priority
of resourcing. Notwithstanding the recently published National
Service Framework, children are still not represented within the
overall key priorities for the National Health Service. This leaves
Primary Care NHS Trusts being unable to fulfil adequately their
prime obligations in relation to the provision of therapies such
as speech and language therapy and Child and Adolescent Mental
Health Services. Future NHS reorganisations need to reflect the
need for viable, well-funded child and community health structures
which are co-terminous with Children's Services Authorities. This
would do much to make sure that the Government's "Change
for Children" programme really is transformational. The "Every
Child Matters" agenda gives a real opportunity for the Government
to resolve the unacceptable confusions and difficulties in this
area which really should not be disguised any longer by talk of
improved practice and partnership working.
3.5.2 What is urgently required is a clear
and properly funded statutory framework which ensures that all
children's therapeutic needs are identified, assessed and provided
for by the NHS as a central aspect of holistic support arrangements
for education and social care needs. These issues are well known
to the Department for Education and Skills but up to now the Government
has been sadly "risk averse" when it comes to bringing
forward long overdue primary legislation in this, as well as other,
areas of special needs provision.
3.6 Transport Issues
3.6.1 Central government transport policy
is causing a number of local authorities some concern. The August
2005 DfES "Update" to Local Authorities provided a new
interpretation of recent non-statutory guidance to local authorities
on SEN transport issues. It would now appear that the Department
for Education and Skills expects local authorities to comply,
without prevarication, in providing a vehicular means of transporting
children with special needs, free of charge to the user. This
is regardless of the family's material or personal circumstances.
It could therefore include situations where a family has an adapted
car, funded under the disability living allowance, and provided
to the family solely because the family has a child with a disability
which makes such a vehicle a necessity.
3.6.2 Apart from the potential budgetary
implications for Local Authorities of this recent guidance, ConfEd
would ask the Committee to note how such practical aspects of
national policy guidance can run counter to the inclusive principles
set out within the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act,
2001.
3.7 Special Schools
3.7.1 The Green Paper, "Excellence
for All Children", 1997 indicated that there was a need to
redefine the role of special schools to bring out their important
contribution in working with mainstream schools to support inclusive
opportunities for pupils, school staff and parents. ConfEd supports
the stance taken by the Department for Education and Skills Working
Group, which duly reported in March 2003,7 that "special
schools should have an important and continuing role in supporting
children and young people with the most severe and complex SEN,
and working in partnership with mainstream schools to assist them
to deliver the wider inclusion agenda" (page 14). Recent
improvements in special school standards and links with local
mainstream schools provide a strong basis for the steady development
of truly inclusive local provision for children across the full
range of special needs.
3.7.2 Attempts by Local Authorities to reshape
the pattern of their specialist provision so as to improve the
range and quality of placement opportunities locally for children
and their parents, are being hampered by financial constraints.
The Targeted Capital Fund remains the route for financing a significant
proportion of the capital costs of refurbishing or re-building
special schools in accordance with the welcome, but much more
generous accommodation schedules contained in the latest DfES
guidance which will supersede Building Bulletin 77. However, the
Targeted Capital Fund constraints are such that increasingly only
single special school improvements are feasible. What is usually
needed, however, are strategic area or Authority-wide developments.
These are vital if reinvigorated special schools are to be at
the heart of new extended/full service school or Area Improvement
Partnership arrangements alongside partner mainstream schools.
3.7.3 ConfEd believes that real opportunities
are being lost in the development of the best possible learning
environments for children with complex needs in modern, outward-looking
special schools as a result of the current restrictions on capital
approvals. This is at the very time that new DfES guidance is
showing the extent to which many special school pupils are being
educated in accommodation which is no longer fit for purpose.
4. CONCLUSION
4.1 It was no surprise to ConfEd that Baroness
Mary Warnock should state last June that the current statutory
process is "wasteful and bureaucratic" and "must
be abolished". She first expressed such severe doubts in
the early 1980s when she criticised the new statutory framework
arising from the report of the Committee of Inquiry in May 1978
into "The Education of Handicapped and Young People",
which she chaired. ConfEd has long supported her viewpoint. Our
members would welcome, therefore, the establishment of a new committee
of inquiry into all aspects of the current special needs framework
in the light of the findings of the Education and Skills Committee.
4.2 In 2002 the Audit Commission published
two highly regarded reports8,9 based upon its major research project
on children with special educational needs in England and Wales.
ConfEd is concerned that many of the most far-reaching proposals
contained in the reports published in the Summer and Autumn of
2002 were not addressed with any conviction within the Government's
"Removing Barriers to Achievement" strategy document
of 2004. We know that this is mainly due to the potential controversy
that reviewing, updating and amending key aspects of the current
statutory framework might bring. We believe that this is not a
valid reason for inaction by central government on these fundamental
issues. The continued neglect of the fundamental tensions within
the present statutory framework for SEN will continue to have
a detrimental impact upon the progress made on behalf of the 20%
or so of children and young people who have special educational
needs and/or disabilities.
4.3 The full inclusion of special needs
within the very positive national "Every Child Matters: Change
for Children Programme" is essential. A multi-agency Common
Assessment Process, rather than the proposed welfare driven Common
Assessment Framework, is urgently required as the basis for a
single "child's plan" which each agency is required
to support. Last year, the summary report of the Cabinet Office's
Special Educational Needs Bureaucracy Project 10 gave a short
term task to the DfES—"to review the use of the different
plans for children with the aim of consolidating and integrating
into a single child plan" (page 5). ConfEd members would
warmly welcome such a development. We believe that parents and
schools would be equally supportive of such a positive development
in joining up all provision made for individual children.
4.4 Above all, ConfEd would ask the Committee
to revisit the widely supported recommendations contained within
the Audit Commission reports of 2002 and, in particular, the following
key recommendation set out in the initial report on "Statutory
Assessment and Statements of SEN : In Need of Review" 8 of
summer 2002:
"the tensions in the statutory framework
are significant and are likely to become more acute as increasingly
SEN resources are delegated to school level. For this reason,
we urge Government to initiate a debate about possible changes
to the statutory framework in the longer term, by establishing
a high-level independent review. Such a review could pave the
way for a fairer, more sustainable system—enabling schools
to respond quickly and effectively to all children's needs and
making better use of the available resources; ensuring that all
those who need it, receive advice and support from other agencies;
and giving parents greater confidence that their child's needs
will be met in school" (page 66).
4.5 In summary, the position of ConfEd,
representing education and children's services staff in Local
Authorities across the country, is that the exciting opportunities
presented by the move towards integrated children's services must
no longer by-pass the 20% or so of all children who have special
educational needs. In this context, the failure of central government
in recent years to address the well-known fundamental flaws within
the present statutory framework, which gives separate legislative
arrangements for addressing educational, care and health needs,
has been damaging and unjustifiable. It has hindered the achievement
of genuinely inclusive practice which can only be achieved through
effective personalised learning. It has also provided a climate
of litigation and disputation as opposed to genuine partnership
between Local Authorities, schools, individual children and their
families.
4.6 We can assure the Committee of ConfEd's
strong support for any moves which would lead to a fundamental,
rigorous and far reaching review of the key issues set out above
in order to improver the life chances of thousands of children
in this country. Much is at stake here for the most vulnerable
children in society and it is our view that the necessary concerted
central government leadership is long overdue.
4.7 During parliamentary discussions about
the Bill which later became the Education Act 1981, a senior MP
commented to the effect that the new legislation "was good
as far as it goes but, like Brighton pier, it is no way to get
to France". Some 25 years on, and thousands of children later,
it is not only Brighton pier but the whole national special needs
system which is showing its age and its need for significant restoration
or, indeed, replacement.
4.8 Education and children's services professionals
are highly committed to meeting the individual needs of children
who require extra help in order to thrive in school and move successfully
into adult life. Vulnerable children who have additional needs
deserve a statutory framework which truly removes barriers to
achievement and fosters partnership between schools, parents and
the statutory agencies.
4.9 The initiation of another full, independent
review of the present position would enable the Government to
establish during the lifetime of this Parliament the best way
forward. ConfEd believes that there would be overwhelming public
support for any Government which has the vision and conviction
to address the major challenges set out above. Members of ConfEd
would be delighted to work within a truly inclusive, properly
funded, less bureaucratic and more child and parent-friendly national
special needs system.
REFERENCES1. Government
Green Paper "Excellence for All Children: Meeting Special
Educational Needs", 1997.
2. "Special Educational Needs: Report of
the Committee of Inquiry Into the Education of Handicapped Children
and Young People", 1978.
3. "Inclusive Schooling: Children with Special
Educational Needs"—Department for Education and Skills
Statutory Guidance, 2001.
4. "National Overview of `Removing Barriers
To Achievement: The Government's Strategy for Special Educational
Needs'—the SEN Adviser Team", Department for Education
and Skills, 2005.
5. "Removing Barriers to Achievement: The
Government's Strategy for Special Educational Needs", Department
for Education and Skills, 2004.
6. "Special Educational Needs and Disability:
Towards Inclusive Schools", Office for Standards in Education,
2004.
7. "Report of the Special Schools Working
Group", Department for Education and Skills, 2003.
8. "Statutory Assessment and Statements
of SEN: In Need of Review", Audit Commission, 2002.
9. "Special Educational Needs: A Mainstream
Issue", Audit Commission, 2002.
10. "Special Educational Needs—Bureaucracy
Project", summary report by Cabinet Office and Department
for Education and Skills, 2004.
October 2005
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