Memorandum submitted by Newcastle upon
Tyne LEA—SEN Division
Elected members from Newcastle City Council
will also be making a separate response to the inquiry.
I would like to bring to your attention, representing
my colleagues, the following concerns we have about SEN provision
nationally and also where we think the greatest progress has been
made.
CONCERNS
1. The level of health provision, particularly
therapists, in our special schools and specialist provision
The DfES are clear in their guidance about the
level of teaching staff required in specialist settings. However
there is no guidance about the level of health/therapy provision
which should be available. This means the level of provision is
left to the decisions of PCTs and Health Trusts where the priorities,
with restricted budgets, will always be on the demands of the
acute rather than long term ongoing therapy provision for children
and young people with SEN. Without any clear national guidance
the levels of therapy provision in our specialist provision are
currently inadequate with the added inequality across the region
of significant variations between local PCTs and health trusts.
LEAs have had to move to make up the shortfall in health provision
and across the region are now funding additional therapy posts
in specialist provision—we've just recently allocated £150,000
to new therapy posts in Newcastle. However this LEA, like other
LEAs in the region, now has very restricted budgets which are
focused on providing central services and it is difficult to know
whether we will be able to continue to fund therapy posts on long
term sustainable basis.
Health practitioners particularly at consultant
and GP level are often only too ready to use the "prescription"
rather than the strategic approach to ensuring their children
and young people receive the right levels of therapy provision
to support their education. Our local non LEA maintained special
schools (NMSS) have a very high compliment of therapists. It costs
roughly twice as much, at the very lowest level of charge, to
send a pupil to a non-maintained rather than an LEA special school—much
of this is associated with much higher levels of therapy and support
staff provision. In our experience health practitioners will support
children going to NMSS so they can receive a high level of therapy
provision rather than be prepared to use their professional standing
to address shortfalls in LEA maintained provision.
The last five SEN Tribunal decisions that have
gone against our LEA have been decided on the relative levels
of therapy in LEA/non maintained schools rather than any issues
to do with quality of provision. In terms of Every Child Matters
outcomes this is a serious issue. We are talking about SEN
Tribunals making decisions based only on the outcomes of "Being
Healthy" and "Staying Safe" and not even considering
whether as a result of placement pupils will "Enjoy and Achieve",
"Make a Positive Contribution" or "Achieve Economic
Well-being." In other words decisions are being made on quality
of care rather than on educational outcomes and provision.
2. Non-Maintained Special Schools and SEN
Tribunals
This is a huge issue for LEAs. There is now
a whole industry of lawyers and legal processes arising from the
SEN Tribunal. I'm sure this is now a very long way from the original
intentions of an SEN Tribunal process to protect parents. I'm
not sure whether it supports parent choice. In our experience
the SEN Tribunal is used mainly by parents who are very determined,
against all professional advice, not to send their children to
LEA maintained provision. Unfortunately recent tribunals have
been decided on therapy provision rather than appropriate educational
provision. The SEN Tribunal creates an antagonistic process of
putting parents against LEA. Solicitors are involved on both sides
and increasingly barristers.
Non-maintained special schools (NMSS)—those
independent of the LEA—should be part of the LEA's continuum
of provision. In reality it is very difficult to get the commitment
of LEAs to fund regional provision for low incidence SEN in specialist
fields such as autism. NMSS therefore can play a central role
regionally in providing the highly specialist provision needed
in key areas of low incidence SEN. We entirely support NMSS who
work in this way. A good example is our local NMSS for autism—Thornhill
Park in Sunderland—which provides for children and young
people with very severe autism from across the country. Two pupils
from our LEA special school have recently gone to Thornhill Park
because they now require the very specialist seven day/week residential
which the school provides and which we could not provide in the
LEA. We have good links with Thornhill Park and these involve
training, staff visits and networking/consultation on key developments.
However we have another NMSS—Percy Hedley—who has
very clearly widened its remit from its nationally recognised
work on cerebral palsy to a much wider role which brings it directly
into competition with LEA maintained schools. There appears to
be no regulation of NMSS or consideration about whether they fulfil
an essential role of specialist regional provision or are competitors
to LEA provision. In the latter there are serious questions about
their role. We strongly believe in the wide range of opportunities
a strong LEA community of schools can provide for children with
very significant disabilities. There are very strong links between
our special/mainstream schools to ensure children with major complex
learning disabilities are fully part of the Newcastle community
with all its associated services. We do not support segregated
and separate out of authority provision except when we know that
pupils need the very specialist services we cannot provide.
The current way of funding NMSS is also unsustainable.
Our City Council, like our neighbours, carries significant debt
for pupils who attend NMSS. Like our neighbours these major overspends
are not balanced, thank goodness, against the funding for pupils
who attend LEA schools. However I'm not sure, as budgets restrict,
how that can continue. It is interesting to note that in Scotland
some of the costs of specialist NMSS are borne centrally to promote
the highly specialist regional/national services they provide.
If NMSS were properly funded and planned they would be an essential
part of the LEA continuum of provision and we would not be deciding
appropriate placements through tribunals.
It is worth note that NMSS are also separated
in the new Ofsted inspection framework. They are being inspected
centrally by CEA and not by the regional inspection providers.
This adds to concerns over the separateness of NMSS from regional
SEN planning and delivery.
3. The Learning Skills Council
There is growing disparity between the way the
LSC funds post-16 provision in schools and in the FE Sector. LEAs
are funded for the SEN provision in their schools at post-16 on
the amount they spent in 2001-02. This has only increased annually
with inflation so the actual numbers of young people funded by
the LSC have not increased at all since 2001-02. However, with
the positive impact of inclusion, the number of young people with
SEN in our post-16 provision has risen steadily. This particularly
includes young people in our mainstream schools with sensory impairment,
physical difficulties and autism. We strongly welcome this although
it means LEAs are having to pick up the increasing shortfall in
funding which is adding to the overall shortfalls and overspends
in SEN budgets. One small local LEA has estimated that it is now
having to provide £600,000 annually to support post-16 pupils
in school provision where the responsibility is clearly the LSCs.
Reviews of SEN funding have been promised annually since 2002
but have not materialised. The major national shortfall in funding
is probably now unaffordable and is perhaps why any resolution
is being put off. The current situation does lead to post-16 SEN
learners being treated quite differently in school and FE provision.
This is unfair and unacceptable. In a recent example in our LEA
a severely deaf pupil had a choice between VI form provision in
his local school or the FE College. The FE college approach was
that the LSC would provide whatever was needed as "learner
support." There were no questions asked about the list of
support requested by the parents and the pupil and the LSC admitted
no checks were put in place. The LEA however has to use the criteria
of "reasonable" provision with all SEN decisions being
made by a multi-agency panel. This resulted in a decision to offer
a much lower level of interpreter support. Interestingly both
parents work in the media and have themselves moved "reasonably"
from a natural position of demanding that the same level of support
is available in both institutions to understanding the constraints
involved in LEA schools.
We currently want to expand our post-16 ESBD
special school provision knowing that, without it, young people
often fail again at the next stage of their progression. However
with post-16 being the responsibility of the LSC we cannot establish
or fund this provision.
4. Parents
We are very interested in the whole area of
parent participation/consultation. We are very aware of the often
disproportionate external influence of parent pressure groups
who come together because of particular issues and who do not
represent the wider parent community. We are also aware that there
are often key differences and disagreements about provision among
groups of parents particularly in the specialist areas of autism
and ADHD. We strongly support strengthening the current process
of proper parent representation through governing bodies—parent
governors elected to represent the views of parents. Our special
school for autism has recently gone through a period of major
metamorphosis from special measures to a "good school"
to a brand new building through PFI scheduled for completion in
September 2007. Parents have been driving this change. The Chair
of Governors is a parent as are the majority of key governors
involved in change. The PFI process has supported visits to other
new special schools across the country to look at design and visits
to autism specific schools to look at different approaches and
the learning environment. The parents strongly promote an eclectic
approach to autism using elements of particular approaches such
as TEACCH while promoting personal development and progression.
At the same time we also have a small parent pressure group strongly
apposed to the LEA's autism provision. This has received far more
publicity and political influence on the "inadequacy"
of Newcastle provision than the parents driving change within
the system. It has also led to some very significant tensions
and intimidation between parents particularly when one group is
labelling the provision the other group send their children to
as "inadequate."
Perhaps we need to make sure that parent governors
are more representative of children and young people across a
school, for example looking for a parent governor to specifically
represent the parents of pupils with SEN. Equally, parent governors
may need more support and training in representing parents views
and how they bring issues to the attention of the governing body.
However we do have a system in parent governors which is essentially
democratic and has the capacity to represent parents views.
PROGRESS
1. Inclusion
We carried out an inclusive reorganisation of
our specialist SEN provision which became operational in September
1999. This created additionally resourced provision in mainstream
for children with physical difficulties and communication difficulties.
This was in addition to the existing provision for sensory impaired
and largely built on its success. We want to highlight just how
successful this has been. It has provided a very wide range of
opportunities for children with significant SEN particularly to
support their academic achievement and personal development. Very
quickly after the reorganisation some of the pupils with physical
difficulties were achieving high standards in their mainstream
settings—achievements which would not have been possible,
or even accessible, in their previous special school. The inclusion
of children with significant SEN has also had a significant impact
on the ethos of mainstream schools and their focus on inclusion.
Our primary school which has the specialist provision for physical
difficulties was identified in its recent Ofsted as being an "outstanding
school" with an outstanding inclusion ethos (Kingston Park
Primary).
2. Multi-agency
The SEN Standards Fund (now part of the School
Effectiveness Grant) has enabled us to establish multi-agency
teams in specific areas of SEN. We have multi-agency teams in
speech and language and dyspraxia as well as a well-established
Young Children Team. The model of practitioners working together
from different professional background to support particularly
very young children is a very powerful one. The Young Children
Team have multi-agency involvement from speech and language therapists,
community paediatrics, social services, nursery nurses and qualified
specialist teachers. On the ground these different professionals
work very effectively together in supporting very young children
with significant SEN. This is perhaps a contrast to the difficulties
at a strategic level where managers from different agencies are
having to reconcile limited budgets.
September 2005
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