Examination of Witnesses (Questions 680-699)
MS MIRIAM
ROSEN, MS
EILEEN VISSER,
MR DAVID
CURTIS, MS
JOAN BAXTER
AND MR
RALPH TABBERER
8 MARCH 2006
Q680 Mr Wilson: But it may be within
the wrong system, is that what you are hinting at?
Mr Curtis: My point is that you
could say that they are performing well, but they may be performing
well but doing the wrong thing. It depends which conclusion you
reach.
Q681 Chairman: Is what the Scots
have done in this area tweaking or radical change?
Ms Visser: I think what the Scots
have been trying to do is to look much more holistically at a
wider range of opinions as part of the developments of vulnerable
children. There is a point on which I would like to come back
to you, if I may: in a way, we need to look at this statementing
process much more in the way that future partnerships and systems
will be developed. It is now not really sustainable to look at
providing legislative protection for one group of vulnerable children
over another. In a way, I think that kind of conceptual shift
of protecting all vulnerable groups equally needs to come at a
local level, as you were saying earlier, but through joint provision
and joint commissioning of services. It is a way of moving forward
through an assessment, a good assessment, identifying needs at
local level, in a way, and not saying, "Let's get rid of
statementing, let's do this with statementing" but "Let's
keep a much more intelligent and swifter system, providing better
cost-effectiveness and value for money, than the one we have at
the moment."
Q682 Chairman: That 18 weeks in purgatory
is still 18 weeks in purgatory.
Ms Visser: Exactly.
Q683 Mrs Dorries: I have a seven-year
old boy in my constituency who has Asperger's and is in a mainstream
school, and his parents have been told that the school does not
want him to sit the SAT exams—in fact they have told the
parent not that they do not want him to, but that he will not,
because his SAT results would affect the outcome of the SAT results
in the school overall. Is that a common occurrence over the country
in schools that you inspect, or is that a one-off, do you think?
Ms Rosen: It varies. The best
schools have good school improvement programmes that impact on
all children and standards arising for all children. I would hope
that what you are talking about is not common, but I do not think
we are able to pronounce definitively on that. Do you know more,
Eileen?
Ms Visser: The evidence we are
getting from our previous Section 10 and Section 5 inspections,
together with the survey work we are doing, has found in the past
that some head teachers in some schools will reject certain kinds
of disabilities if they think it is going to pull down their league
tables. They are usually schools that do not have an inclusive
ethos or an inclusive feel to them. We are seeing now more schools
who put the achievements of all groups of learners at the heart
of everything that they do. In so doing, particularly with the
increased information we now have, better than ever before, in
terms of looking at the achievements of a range of groups of pupils
with our new PANDA, with the contextual added-value data and so
on, schools will be celebrated for the fact that they are including
more diverse learners. So it is an argument that perhaps had some
importance a couple of years ago, but now, with new, better information
and better pupil tracking, it should not be part of an argument
at all.
Q684 Mrs Dorries: Do you think there
is a juxtaposition here between the Government's position in setting
targets, the SATS, and wanting schools to perform well to those
targets, and yet also the inclusion framework? Miriam, you described
the inclusion framework—which was great, because trying
to get somebody from government to admit that an inclusion framework
exists within schools is quite difficult. Do you think there is
a juxtaposition between the imposition of the targets and the
importance of the SAT results, and imposing this inclusion framework
on schools? Does that not put schools in a bit of a position?
Ms Visser: I do not think so,
no. I would have agreed with that a couple of years ago, but I
really believe that the improved information we have at pupil
level ensures that schools can celebrate the success of all their
pupils equally and are judged on not just the outcomes at national
expectation level but in the value they add to the range of learners.
Q685 Mrs Dorries: I am sorry, but
we know that is not the case. I think someone was explaining this
morning that Wales have taken the SATs results at age seven out
of the framework completely to remove problems like this, so I
do not think that can be the case. If that were the case, then
I would not have the position of a child in my constituency whose
school have told the parents he is not going to sit the SATs because
of the effect it would have on the outcome of the results for
the school.
Ms Visser: One of the challenges
I think we face is that we need to ensure that the achievements
of all learners are included in the national performance framework.
That was a recommendation that we made to the Department that
unfortunately has not been taken up yet. That would ease some
of these problems.
Q686 Chairman: When did you make
that recommendation?
Ms Visser: In the suite of reports
that came out when we were sharing good practice in 2003 and the
target setting report in 2004.
Q687 Chairman: They have had two-and-a-half
years to act on this and they have not.
Ms Rosen: Could I make a point
on what Eileen said about the better pupil level data, because
that does impact on the PANDA. It means that, when Ofsted visits
a school and makes judgments which are informed by the data, the
achievements of pupils with special educational needs do count.
This is due to improvements in the data that we have and it could
be that the head teacher you are talking about is not fully aware
of that yet.
Q688 Chairman: Could you spell out
what PANDA (Performance and Assessment Report) is?
Ms Visser: Performance . . .
Ms Rosen: Performance Assessment
Data . . .
Ms Visser: Analysis.
Chairman: There is a bit of confusion
there about this acronym!
Q689 Mrs Dorries: In 2002-04 there
was an increase of 43% in spending in independent special school
places. We do not have the figure here as to what percentage of
that 43% came from tribunals. What do you think the reason for
the increase is and how many of those 43% do you think came from
tribunals?
Mr Curtis: This is a study that
we are doing at the moment. We hope to complete it in the summer.
We did a survey at the beginning of the study and half the local
authorities identified some of it being as a result of tribunals,
but I think we need to look at the response rate and look at the
analysis in a bit more detail. The overall increase in the costs
has been put down to poor budgeting as far as the local authorities
are concerned, in the first instance, in probably about 40% of
the cases. But unanticipated need and increased charges from the
independent schools have been identified as the main factors contributing
to that cost.
Q690 Mrs Dorries: I think you are
going to find that that "some of it" is going to be
quite large, because every child in my constituency at an independent
school place is there as a result of a tribunal and I cannot imagine
that my constituency is that different from every other across
the UK.
Ms Baxter: There is a huge variation,
obviously, across the country in this. It perhaps also ought to
be noted that in certain categories of special educational needs
there has been a very significant increase over the years. For
instance, children and young people with autistic spectrum disorder,
and children and young people with behavioural difficulties are
two very significant growth areas in terms of out-of-authority
placements, but we are not really ready yet to tell you in more
detail.
Q691 Mrs Dorries: I do accept that,
but the point is that those children who are in independent school
places will be the children of affluent parents, parents who can
afford to go to a tribunal in the first place who can get their
children into those schools. They are not going to be the children
from the disadvantaged families or the poorer families or those
on benefits; they are going to be from white, middle-class, fairly
affluent families.
Ms Baxter: I have just returned
from an authority where I have been doing some case tracking and
you are not actually right. Certainly looking at this particular—
Mrs Dorries: How can I be wrong when—
Q692 Chairman: Hang on. You can tell
her if she is not right, if you like, but let her come back after
that.
Ms Baxter: The cases that I was
looking at in particular are of children who are looked after
by the local authority who have very significant mental health
needs who have been placed in a planned way in independent schools.
So it is a mixed picture.
Q693 Mrs Dorries: I can accept that,
but the fact that a tribunal costs between £2,000 and £10,000
means that the majority have to be by the more affluent parents.
Mr Curtis: That may well be a
finding from the work we are doing. We have identified—and
I think we put this in our submission to you—that there
is a tremendous difference between different regions within the
country. There is a very low level of take-up relatively in, say,
the West Midlands, compared with London and the South East, but
there is also a reasonable correlation between the level of placements
and the level of tribunal activity in those regions. There is
a high level of tribunal activity in London and the South East.
We are finding that in some local authorities—and, as I
say, we will have to look at the findings overall—because
of their experience of tribunal activity, they then place children
in independent or maintained schools because they are anticipating
the fact that if it goes to tribunal it would be a very costly
activity and they will lose anyway.
Q694 Mrs Dorries: Are you looking
at the socio-demographics of the regions also?
Mr Curtis: Yes.
Q695 Mrs Dorries: Miriam, you talked
about the statementing process being resource intensive and bureaucratic—and
there was something else which I did not get—but do you
see the statementing process as being a barrier to achieving a
full inclusion agenda? I have noticed that a lot of witness are
coming forward recently and deriding the statementing process.
I am not quite sure if that is because they see that stopping
them achieving the full inclusion that they want or whether they
think there is something wrong with the statementing process itself.
Ms Rosen: It does take a long
time, it is bureaucratic. It ties up a lot of the special educational
needs coordinators' time in a school and it ties up a lot of local
authority time as well. It means that people focus on getting
the paperwork right for the statementing process so that eventually
a certain amount of provision is allocated for that child, rather
than on getting resources to the point of need as quickly as possible
for all children, and we feel we need to focus more on getting
the resource very quickly to all children who need it. That is
why we feel it is a barrier. We would encourage authorities which
are looking at joint commissioning, and how they can get resources
in more quickly to all children who need it and not just those
particular children who are at the moment able to get hold of
a statement.
Q696 Mrs Dorries: Some special needs
are very complex, so, if we do not have the statementing process—and
I quite take your point that we need to get the resource to those
children, and the earlier the better because we do see improvements
in getting in fairly early—how would you propose that those
more complex needs are identified and the correct resource is
allocated to those children?
Ms Rosen: We are not advocating
getting rid of the statementing process but rather encouraging
a growth in all these other processes that would result in getting
resources to the point of need earlier. I think it would be extremely
difficult to get rid of the statementing process, so we would
see perhaps the two continuing side by side.
Q697 Chairman: Would you see it as
a last resort?
Ms Rosen: For the
most needy children. However, there is a problem, as Eileen pointed
out, in that only certain groups of need are able to get a statement
at the moment. Not all groups of vulnerable children have access
to that.
Q698 Mrs Dorries: When mainstream
schools and special schools it works very well. This is something
that the Government have encouraged but is not happening. One
of the answers could be because so many special schools have been
closed down; however, what do you think the reason is for those
who remain not working well with mainstream schools? Why is there
no collaboration?
Ms Rosen: We have found a variable
picture across the country. In some areas there is collaboration.
Some years ago now it was possible that special schools were putting
a lot of energy into staying open rather than into collaboration.
I think that is shifting slightly now, in that more effort is
going into collaboration. But we are still seeing a very variable
picture. I think Eileen could probably add more to that.
Ms Visser: I think Miriam has
really made the point that we are again moving through a changed
time, so instead of special schools fighting to stay open in terms
of their own children, as it were, the future now is seen much
more as a collaboration. I think there are a number of difficulties
that still hinder that collaboration. One is undoubtedly attitudes
and insecurities—probably on both sides of the fence. The
other sometimes is distance, of course: regional provision changes
so much that it is really quite hard for good cluster arrangements
to work effectively. Of course, the other is to do with the fact
that, until we get over the notion that special schools are planned
and part of a wider continuum and are seen as part of an access
route for a range of pupils, special schools have and still are
always seen as a kind of bolt-on, and, when that perception has
been made of you, that stops collaboration, because you do not
come into the strategies at the same time, you always get the
end product of things, and there is a kind of tension between
the special/separate and the mainstream. We could sort that. It
is not a problem to sort.
Q699 Chairman: Can we narrow this
down? The figures that we have been presented with suggest that
the same percentage of children are still in special schools.
That has been the same for quite a considerable period of time.
Ms Visser: Yes.
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