Memorandum submitted by Lord Adonis, Parliamentary
Under Secretary of State for Schools
I thought it might be helpful to the Committee
to write about a number of salient and topical issues with regard
to SEN before I give evidence to you next week. I cover below
five issues:
1. The National Audit of support, services
and provision for children with low incidence SEN.
2. The Education and Inspections Bill.
3. The withdrawal of DfES Circular
11/90.
4. Admissions of children with special
educational needs to Academies.
5. The establishment of a new national
representative body for special schools.
1. NATIONAL AUDIT
OF SUPPORT,
SERVICES AND
PROVISION FOR
LOW INCIDENCE
NEEDS
A commitment was made in the SEN Strategy Removing
Barriers to Achievement (DfES, 2004) to carry out a national
audit of provision made for children with low incidence needs,
in order to promote effective regional and sub-regional planning
to meet the needs of such children. Local authorities find it
particularly hard to plan for low incidence needs because of relatively
low numbers, the severity of needs, and the ebb and flow of population
movements.
The aim of the National Audit was to:
— gain a picture of how local authorities
meet the needs of the children with low incidence SEN;
— explore gaps in services, support
and provision, and how these gaps are being addressed, or could
be addressed;
— consider the implications for regional/local
planning and development, including the possible development of
Regional Centres of Expertise.
January 2005 data shows that in maintained schools,
and non-maintained special schools, less than 2.5% of children
on School Action Plus or with a statement of SEN have a hearing
impairment (2.2%), a visual impairment (1.2%), a multi-sensory
impairment (0.2%) or profound and multiple learning difficulties
(1.3%)—needs traditionally associated with low incidence.
However, data from the SEN Regional Partnerships on out-of-authority
placements show that many authorities are finding it difficult
to meet the needs of children and young people with behavioural,
emotional or social difficulties (BESD) and autistic spectrum
disorders (ASD) within their areas.
We therefore decided that, for the immediate
practical purposes of this audit, low incidence SEN should embrace
children and young people with severe sensory/multi-sensory impairments,
severe autistic spectrum disorders, and severe behavioural, emotional
and social difficulties.
We have just received the final report on the
National Audit. I enclose a copy for the committee in advance
of my appearance, and we will publish it in full on the day I
give evidence to you. It will take some weeks for us to consider
its findings thoroughly and publish a response. However, I know
you will wish to hear our initial reflections on the findings
and I thought you might find it helpful if I note some areas of
the report which we feel are key:
— Child and Adolescent Mental Health
Services (CAMHS) —the report concluded these should
be more accessible to young people with low incidence needs, including
those with severe sensory impairment who may develop mental health
issues as a result of a feeling of isolation. There were calls
for changing patterns of mental health support, with specialist
workers operating more directly in support of front line staff.
We accept that improving support for mental health and emotional
well-being is vital to securing our objective of better outcomes
for all children and young people. We are working closely with
the Department of Health (DH) to address concerns on CAMHS. The
aim of the work is to improve services across the board, ensure
that comprehensive services are in all areas by end 2006 and ensure
continued improvements in service quality beyond this milestone
in line with the ten year vision for CAMHS set out in the National
Service Framework. CAMHS services are expanding at all levels—including
at "Tier 2" which lends support to, and works jointly
with front line settings such as schools. There are now many examples
of highly innovative and effective joint work between CAMHS and
schools and we will continue to encourage this, working through
our CAMHS Regional Development Workers. Commissioning of CAMHS
is also now a joint process across health, education and social
care. Multi-agency CAMHS partnerships are now in place across
all areas and are important mechanisms for strengthening the "joining
up" across our specialist and more mainstream services. The
development of children's trusts will lend further support to
these developments;
— Planning for progression at 14
plus—arrangements need to be better informed and more
person-centred with all relevant services involved. There is a
need for more strategic planning of college provision to ensure
that students with low incidence needs are better catered for.
The report indicates the practical steps local authorities are
taking to address perceived gaps, for example, multi-agency transition
teams and transition protocols, and the development of key worker
roles—all of which we are encouraging through our policies.
The Learning and Skills Council, which has a specific responsibility
under the Learning and Skills Act 2000 to help young people with
learning difficulties and disabilities, published Through Inclusion
to Excellence, the report of a review of provision for this group
of learners, in November last year. The report recommended that
the Learning and Skills Council should develop a national strategy
for regional and local delivery through collaboration with partners,
to develop high quality, learner centred, cost-effective provision.
Wide consultation on the report has just finished. We want to
see higher standards for learners with learning difficulties and
disabilities and to tackle concerns about the quality and consistency
of provision, particularly within the network of independent specialist
colleges catering for these learners. The forthcoming Further
Education White paper will commit the government to further improvements
in this area. We are working with DH to improve the participation
of young people and their families in the transition review meetings
required for all young pupils in year 9 with SEN statements through
a national programme involving 70 local authorities across England.
And we have commissioned the Council for Disabled Children to
draw up guidance for professionals setting out their roles and
responsibilities in the transition process and to draw together
the various transition guidance and good practice advice into
one document setting out the standards we expect to be achieved.
DfES is also working in partnership with DH on three of the DH
led pilots on individual budgets to include a focus on the needs
of young disabled people at the point of transition as they move
into adult services. This draws on the learning from the "In
Control" pilots pioneered by MENCAP in association with a
number of local authorities. I attach copies of the speeches made
by Liam Byrne and myself at the launch of these pilots on 30 November
2005. We are undertaking this work as part of the programme of
the new cross-departmental Office for Disability Issues based
at the Department for Work and Pensions.
— Gaps in family short break and
respite opportunities—lead to unmet needs which significantly
increase stress levels in families. The Government accepts that
more needs to be done to improve the support available to the
families of disabled children. The legislative framework for change
is in place and we are committed to improved delivery of services
on the ground. In some cases a lack of respite can lead to family
crises which require more costly interventions. Short breaks can
help to minimise parental stress and enable families to lead more
normal lives. The Children's National Service Framework, published
in September 2004, includes a standard on disabled children and
those with complex health needs. The standard is that these children
should receive co-ordinated, high-quality child and family-centred
services which are based on assessed needs, which promote social
inclusion and, where possible, which enable them and their families
to live ordinary lives. The NSF standard underlines the importance
of family support services, including short breaks to families
with disabled children—particularly those with complex health
needs, challenging behaviour or autistic spectrum disorders. It
states that local authorities and PCTs should offer a range of
short break services to families who need them. DfES has supported
implementation of the NSF through: a series of conferences bringing
Local Authorities together to consider implementation issues;
guidance and best practice to encourage more flexible forms of
provision, including the use of direct payments and better multi-agency
working through children's trusts; the publication of exemplars
and guidance to enable mainstream settings to support children
with complex needs; and the materials and best practice developed
through the Early Support Programme. DfES and DH are now scoping
options for further work to support local implementation of the
NSF for disabled children.
— Regional Centres of Expertise—respondents
had mixed views on the question of Regional Centres of Expertise.
There was little support for RCEs as centres of specialist provision
for children but there was support for strengthening generic provision
and services, using specialist expertise in a developmental way.
There was a general vote in favour of "virtual" support
arrangements (as distinct from, say, a specific physical centre),
designed to promote, but importantly not replace, local knowledge
and expertise. RCEs might, in effect, be resource centres but
working within agreed regional strategies. My initial view is
that we should invite each SEN Regional Partnership—whose
funding I recently extended for a further two years—to discuss
what form a Regional Centre of Expertise might take in their area,
and consider what steps would be necessary to move towards one.
These discussions would be informed by the National Audit report
and any relevant recommendations made by your Committee. The Partnerships
have a specific role in enabling local authorities to work together
to tackle issues of common interest where children with SEN are
concerned.
The Audit recommends that future developments
be based on coherent and co-ordinated assessment of current services
and provision, against clearer national standards. There are several
references in the text to the Quality Standards for Visual Impairment
Services published by DfES in June 2002. We recently consulted
on more generic standards for SEN support/outreach services. These
are closely related to the criteria employed by OFSTED in the
course of their thematic review of SEN Support and Outreach Services.
The results of that consultation are currently being considered.
2. THE EDUCATION
AND INSPECTIONS
BILL
We are grateful for the Select Committee's report
on the Schools White Paper, which helped us in framing the Education
and Inspections Bill. The Bill contains a number of to enhance
the quality of provision for children with special educational
needs.
The Bill commits to a system of fair admissions
for all pupils and strengthens the Admissions Code of Practice
so that admission authorities will have to act in accordance with
it. The planning and commissioning role of local authorities will
be strengthened (by, for example, making the local education authority
itself—not the School Organisation Committee—the local
decision maker for re-organisation proposals, including proposals
in respect of special schools and SEN units). Local education
authorities will be able propose alterations to provision at any
school, including special schools and special units for SEN, and
with the Secretary of State's consent, they will also be able
to propose new community schools, including community special
schools. Special schools will have the same opportunities as mainstream
schools to acquire trust status, and the process for existing
non-maintained and independent schools to enter the maintained
sector, with local authority approval, will be simplified.
The Bill also reduces the impact of transport
as a barrier to parents from low income groups attending mainstream
schools, by extending the offer of free transport for their children
to attend any of three suitable secondary schools, where these
schools are more than two and less than six miles away from their
home and for primary aged pupils to the nearest school more than
two miles from their home. This will extend effective choice to
more low income parents, including parents of children with SEN,
and builds on local authorities' duty to assist parents and carers
with transport where children have particular needs or disabilities
such that travel assistance is required. Pupils with statements
of Special Educational Needs (SEN) who have transport needs written
into their statement of SEN, must be provided with free transport
to and from school.
At present pupils excluded from school for a
fixed period often receive minimal education and for permanently
excluded pupils local authorities are expected to arrange suitable
provision from the 16th day of the exclusion. The Bill will require,
from September 2007, schools to arrange full-time education for
a child, usually off-site, from the 6th day of a fixed period
exclusion in the school year and will amend the 1996 Education
Act to require local authorities to provide suitable full time
education from the 6th day for permanently excluded pupils. These
new requirements will benefit pupils with SEN, who figure disproportionately
among those excluded from schools both permanently and temporarily.
The Bill introduces a new duty on local education
authorities to make arrangements to identify children of compulsory
school age in their area who are not on a school roll and are
not receiving a suitable education otherwise than by being at
school. This will be important in identifying children with SEN
and enabling authorities to identify the nature of their
needs and the type of provision they require.
The Bill also places a duty on local education
authorities to, so far as reasonably practicable, secure access
for young people in the area to sufficient positive leisure-time
activities (educational and recreational) for the improvement
of their well-being, and sufficient facilities for such activities.
The new duty applies to young people aged 13 to 19 and also to
people aged 20 to 25 who have a learning difficulty. We are keen
to ensure that such activities are accessible to all young people
as they make their transitions to adulthood.
Although not mentioned specifically in the Bill,
we will also be taking forward the commitments in the Schools
White Paper to:
— ensure that for pupils with severe
or complex behavioural, emotional and social difficulties, we
identify the underlying causes of their behaviour as early as
possible so that they can access multi-agency support. In some
cases it will be appropriate for a child with challenging behaviour
to be educated in specialist settings and we have accepted the
recommendation of the Practitioner Group on Discipline and Behaviour
that further investigation is required to determine how we might
improve specialist provision for children with behavioural, emotional
and social difficulties. We will carry out work over the coming
months looking at: the guidance and support available to help
schools identify the underlying causes of a child's behavioural
or emotional difficulties; good practice in the development of
flexible curriculum, support and therapeutic pathways that better
link mainstream schools with multi-professional support services,
including those located in special schools and PRUs; and strategies
for developing and improving specialist BESD provision.
— extend SEN specialist status to the
special school sector at large (50 schools in the next 2 years)
and work with the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust and the
Youth Sport Trust to encourage more special schools to submit
applications for a curriculum specialism (with a view to being
able to designate a further 50 special schools by 2008).
These proposals were largely welcomed by the
Special Education Consortium, who I met last month, and I am committed
to continuing dialogue with the SEC on the best means of implementing
these reforms.
I should also draw attention to the new duties
which schools will assume under the Disability Discrimination
Act starting in December 2006. The Act places schools and other
public bodies under a duty to promote equality of opportunity
for disabled people. The duty is important in that it requires
schools to be pro-active in consulting disabled pupils and staff
on plans for promoting equality of opportunity across the school's
activities and, for example, for taking action to address any
equity gaps in provision for disabled pupils who are faring less
well than their peers. We are currently working with the Disability
Rights Commission to publish guidance to schools on the preparation
of their disability equality schemes.
3. CIRCULAR 11/90:
STAFFING FOR
PUPILS WITH
SPECIAL EDUCATIONAL
NEEDS
In an earlier evidence session, concerns were
voiced about this circular being withdrawn, and these concerns
were picked up in the press.
Let me emphasise that the Government remains
committed to ensuring that children with SEN receive the right
level of attention and support. That has been a central plank
of the Government's SEN strategy. Children with SEN have benefited
from improvements in pupil: teacher ratios (PTR) and pupil: adult
ratios (PAR) since 1997, under this administration.
The overall PTR for the maintained nursery,
primary and secondary sector was 17.4 in January 2005 compared
to 17.7 in 2004. At the same time, the within-school PAR in primary
schools in January 2005 was 13.4 compared to 14.0 in 2004, with
the secondary figure being 12.2 in January 2005 compared to 12.8
in 2004. The PAR counts teachers and support staff but excludes
administrative and clerical staff.
The PTR for special schools (maintained and
non-maintained) in January 2005 was 6.2 compared to 6.3 in 2004
(6.4 in 1997). The PAR was 2.2 in January 2005 compared to 2.4
in 2004 (3.1 in 1997).
The NUT report that some teachers found the
staff time per pupil illustrative suggestions in 11/90 helpful.
But there has been longstanding concern about the rigidity of
these suggestions, which led DfES—in response to representations
from other social partners—to consult on their withdrawal.
The consultation revealed no major support for their retention.
The government's concern is that schools should
have the flexibility to meet the specific needs of individual
pupils and the possibilities offered by flexible deployment of
staff. It should be for individual schools and local authorities
to determine precise staffing levels, having regard to the number
of children with special educational needs, the range and complexity
of SEN represented within a given school, the resources available
and other relevant factors. Those decisions will be informed by
the Education Act 1996 which contains the current legal provisions
applying to SEN, the SEN Code of Practice which provides statutory
guidance, the associated SEN toolkit and other relevant publications
such as The Management of SEN Expenditure (DfES, May 2004), which
gives extensive and very detailed guidance on a wide range of
financial matters.
4. ADMISSIONS
TO ACADEMIES
The Government has been absolutely clear that
academies must play their full and proper part in provision for
SEN pupils, and that their status as independently managed schools
will not affect this. Academies themselves recognise and welcome
their SEN responsibilities, and the facts demonstrate (as set
out in the Annex) that they are fulfilling them. As the Annex
shows, academies, on average, admit more pupils with SEN (both
with and without statements) than their predecessor schools and
secondary schools in England.
Parents have the right to make representations
to their local authority for an academy—as for any other
state school—to be named in their child's statement. The
local authority must consider those representations and will consult
the academy, as it would any other state school, before a decision
is taken about naming them in the statement. The principle is
that academies (as other schools) should consent to being named
in a child's statement unless it would be incompatible with the
efficient education of other children and there are no reasonable
steps that could be taken to prevent that. If the local authority
names a school other than the academy in the statement, the parents
have the right of appeal against that decision to the Special
Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal (SENDIST)—as,
again, applies in respect of disputes about the naming of any
other type of state schools.
Academies are not under the same statutory duty
as maintained schools to admit a child whose statement names them
as the appropriate school. Technically, therefore, an academy
could refuse to admit a child if SENDIST orders that they should
be named in a child's statement. However, this has never happened
to date, and the model academy funding agreement (a contract between
the Secretary of State and the Academy Trust) gives the Secretary
of State a power to direct the admission of a child to an academy.
Any such direction is binding on the academy. If an academy were
to refuse to admit a child following a SENDIST decision and seek
support from the Secretary of State for their position, I think
it highly unlikely that there would be circumstances where it
would be appropriate for the Secretary of State to do otherwise
than direct the academy to admit the child.
5. NATIONAL REPRESENTATIVE
BODY FOR
SPECIAL SCHOOLS
I announced that we are providing start up funds
of £150,000 for the creation of a national representative
body for special schools. It will be the first national organisation
for all special schools and will be set up by the National Association
of Independent and non-maintained Special Schools (NASS) and the
National Association of Emotional and Behavioural Difficulty Schools
(NAES). I see this as an important development since it will create
a network which will enable the collective voice of staff in special
schools to be heard at local, regional and national levels. It
will help special schools to work more closely with mainstream
schools for the inclusion of children with SEN and share best
practice about ways of working with children with SEN and Disabilities;
and it will offer additional support and training to special school
staff.
Maintained Secondary Schools and Academies:
Number and percentage of pupils with special educational needs
JANUARY 2005, ENGLAND.
|
Total number of
| Total number of pupils with statementsof SEN |
Expressed as a % of total no of pupils |
Total number of pupils with SEN without a statement |
Expressed as a % of total no of pupils |
| All maintained secondary schools (2005 data) |
3,316,050 |
76,584 |
2.3 |
473,507 |
14.3 |
| All academies (for which we have 2005 data) |
15,196 |
508 |
3.3 |
4,184 |
27.5 |
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