Maintaining momentum of SEND reform

Two years into the new SEN and Disabilities system, how do we maintain the changes that are making a difference? A personal view from practitioner Dr Simon Jenner.

Teenage girl with younger downs syndrome girl having fun

On the 1^st September 2014, the biggest changes for a generation in the field of SEN and Disabilities were introduced in England and Wales by the government. These were part of the 2014 Children and Families Act and arose out of work undertaken by the Department for Education and partners.

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      string(5780) "outside school and any changes in the pupil’s needs.” A core part of the structured conversation is the focus on targets and outcomes and this is reflected in the code when it requires that;“6.54 The impact and quality of the support and interventions should be evaluated, along with the views of the pupil and their parents. This should feed back into the analysis of the pupil’s needs.” (DfE 2015) The guidance also requires that discussions should be led by a teacher with good knowledge of the child, allow sufficient time to discuss all the issues and will normally be longer than usual parent teacher consultations. 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The report is an exemplification of the schools policy on SEN and should be used as a creative and positive opportunity to develop and review the approach to SEN. The CoP also makes clear that as part of the report schools should detail “arrangements for consulting parents of children with SEN and involving them in their child’s education” and also “arrangements for handling complaints from parents of children with SEN about the provision made at the school.” (6.79 DfE 2015) While the first couple of years of implementation many schools have tended to recycle existing policies into the new format there is now the opportunity do use report in a more creative way to examine practice and improve their offer. Some of the best practice has seen schools work with parents in the construction and review of the report to ensure it reflects parent’s views of the schools offer and their aspirations. As it is also the report from the school governing body schools have used the opportunity to engage the SEND Governor and Chair. OFSTED and Schools Accountability The SEN requirements for parental engagement are embedded in the Ofsted inspection framework ensuring that there is a synergy between the expectations in the new CoP (Ofsted 2016). As part of the framework there is a very clear focus in the criteria on securing better outcomes for children with SEN to be outstanding;“The progress across the curriculum of disadvantaged pupils, disabled pupils and those with special educational needs currently on roll matches or is improving towards that of other pupils with the same starting points.” And that;“For pupils generally, and specifically for disadvantaged pupils, disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs, progress is above average across nearly all subject areas.” (Ofsted par 189) This is not tied to floor standards but progress measures;“Inspectors will consider the progress of pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities in relation to the progress of all pupils nationally with similar starting points. Inspectors will examine the impact of funded support for them on removing any differences in progress and attainment. The expectation is that the identification of special educational needs leads to additional or different arrangements being made and a consequent improvement in progress.”  (Ofsted 2016 par 185) This is in line with ensuring rising aspirations for children with SEND and vulnerable leaners. 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Inclusion

Achieving best value from your Pupil Premium allocations

20 Jun 2017

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      string(5670) "is not a criticismof the people involved, but of the way statements were written as opposed to theintention behind the move to replace statements with EHC Plans. Giving parents theoption of a personal budget is further evidence of the importance being attached toparents feeling they have greater control over the decision-making process. Althoughpersonal budgets have been used for aspects of social care and for health, they area new concept in education and it is taking a little while for the advantages to berecognised.The cultural shift is seen, not only in terms of parents and families having greaterinvolvement in the support their own child needs, but the government hopes they willhelp to move forward the SEND system as a whole. This is most apparent in the waymany have helped their local authority to compile the Local Offer, often through theParent Carer Forums that exist in most areas or other parent / carer groups, as well asthrough individual contributions. Now Local Offers have been in place since September2014, parents and other interested parties remain involved by sending in suggestionson what could be improved, for instance in terms of presentation or content. LAs have aduty, not only to publish the comments they receive, but also to explain what they havedone to address them. These can be viewed on each LA’s Local Offer website.Children and young people with SEND are likely to need the support of other servicesin addition to education. Those with more complex needs may need the involvementof both health and social care. The Every Child Matters agenda and the Children Actthat followed it, was a previous attempt to encourage the three services to work moreclosely together. As a result, education and social care have usually been combined atLA level under a single Director of Children’s Services, instead of having a Director ofEducation and a Director of Social Care. 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There should also be a Designated Medical Officer (DMO) or aDesignated Clinical Officer (DCO) to act as the link between the local NHS and the LA.In addition, much of the documentation about the reforms has been badged by boththe Department for Education (DfE) and the Department of Health (DoH), which is ahopeful sign of progress.Moving to school level, another change in culture has been the emphasis on everyteacher being responsible for the progress of every pupil they teach, with the SENCOThe Local OfferLAs are responsible for compiling a web-based Local Offer, which lists the provision for SEND available in thelocal area, as well as provision used outside the area.Schools are responsible for making a contribution to the LA’s Local Offer.At least annually, LAs must publish the comments they have received and what they have done about them.In this way, it is hoped that the SEND system will be driven forward in a cycle of continuous improvement.15Vol 7.6School Leadership Todaywww.teachingtimes.comTrendsEvidenceineducationtaking on a more strategic role. Of course, how this works out in practice will vary fromschool to school, depending on the size, the age range and needs of the pupils, a wellas many other factors. For primary schools, as teaching is mostly in the hands of a classteacher, the idea of taking responsibility for all pupils in the class will be nothing new.It may be a different situation in secondary schools, where subject teachers are dealingwith a moving population of pupils during the week and getting to know how to meetthe needs of each individual is far more of a challenge.It is rather too early to draw conclusions about how significant the move fromhaving the separate categories of School Action and School Action Plus reduced to asingle category called ‘SEN Support’ will prove to be. Again, the ‘Assess, Plan, Do, Review’cycle that goes with the change, may not be very different from what schools wereimplementing before. On paper, the main difference would appear to be that outsidespecialists – in as far as they are available – can be called in at any time, rather thanwaiting until a child has moved to School Action Plus.The reduction in categories could be seen as part of a pattern of reducing thenumber of categories from five stages in the first Code of Practice (1994), where theSEN Register was the first stage; to four in the 2001 Code, which did not require aregister to be kept; to three in the present Code: SEN Support, EHC needs assessment,EHC Plan. What will be interesting will be whether the change to SEN Support leads tomuch difference in the overall numbers being identified. In the last few years, numbersof children with statements / EHC Plans has remained constant at around 2.8%, whilethe rest of the SEN population has fluctuated between 15.1% and 18%. 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Leadership

SLT 7.6 SEND Reforms – where are we now?

13 Mar 2017

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      string(5667) "from ourselves. We produced a brief introduction to hospitality as a theological understanding of learning to live well together and then asked the 20 participating schools to draw on this in designing their pedagogy using an approach called ‘What If?’ Learning.One Year 5 lesson involved investigating the durability of rocks. The class was divided into groups, each with a scientific investigation to undertake.  The teacher’s objective was for pupils to show curiosity towards the views of others. Midway through the session when pupils had formulated hypotheses and were planning tests, the teacher introduced ‘unexpected changes’ to the groupings. Children had to engage differently and ‘think about how to work as a team.’ The teacher observed children empathising with the child joining their group who had not contributed to their investigation plan. The group needed to be inclusive, ‘welcoming’ and ‘respectful’ while listening to each other’s viewpoints.  There are a number of interesting features to highlight in this example.The character emphasis developed more than individual grit. It focussed on learning to live well together.Character education was not an add-on to the science. It turned ‘gaining knowledge of science of rocks’ into ‘learning how to work well as a scientist’.What had changed was the framing of the lesson, rather than the content (i.e. learning how to work well as hospitable scientists rather than accumulating knowledge to perform well in a test).Now for the big question – does an approach like this work? That was what the DfE wanted to know. We could have answered this by testing pupils’ academic performance. But how do we find out if they have developed their character through the project? To do this we used ambiguous situations to test the pupil’s responses to those they perceived different from themselves.What we discovered is that after the project the pupils were less likely to make negative judgments on other children in ambiguous situations.  So yes, the approach appears ‘to work’, which is good news. But to focus only on such measurable outcomes is to miss the important point: that children’s well-being, and society as a whole, will be much enhanced if children’s education is reframed from its current focus on individual performance to a focus on how learning contributes to living well together.” Professor Trevor Cooling, National Institute for Christian Education Research, Canterbury Christ Church University.The Character Charity How To Build Characterful Schools?Every passionate educator knows that developing their students’ character will be vital in shaping their overall success both personally and professionally. Just as each new generation of parents, carers and teachers aims to impart their wisdom to their children, each new generation of academics aims to create a common language that can drive changes in character education at an institutional level.  In the UK, The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtue, based at Birmingham University, is the leading UK organisation focused solely on the examination of how character and virtues impact on individuals and society.  A key conviction underlying the existence of the Centre is that the virtues that make up a good character can be learnt and taught. The Jubilee Centre’s Framework for Character Education in Schools outlines a four-part typology of virtue – Moral, Civic, Performance and Intellectual.  At an international level, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development is leading on this.  In terms of character education its main aim is what it calls ‘global competency’, which provides a framework of education which puts social and emotional skills, as well as attitudes and values, on an equal footing with hard disciplinary knowledge.The challenge now is maintaining commitment to a common language of character, which we can all use to communicate effectively with each other; whether you are a Year 6 child or government minister we should all be using the same language when we talk about character. This will help us avoid confusing ourselves with character clichés and catch-all buzzwords.  Development of character requires constant practice in a formal, taught environment, which engages children directly and helps them apply the skills they need. So what works?Here are 3 ways that evidence shows can develop character values in children:Mentoring – individual tutoring and pastoral guidance in a formal setting is proven in research to help students deemed to be ‘at risk’. Careful screening and ongoing supervison of volunteers, monitoring implementation and the long-term commitment of volunteers lead to more successful programmes. (Fostering and measuring skills: improving cognitive and non-cognitive skills to promote life time success: Tim Kautz, James J. Heckman, Ron Diris, Bas ter Weel, Lex BorghansSocial action is one of the most empowering things a young person can do. Volunteering, fundraising and campaigning allow the development of skills such as teamwork and leadership, #iwill is an example of an organisation which makes this possible and it is currently working with Ofsted to share best practice.Whole school approach: At a recent Teach First impact conference Alan Milburn, the Government’s Social Mobility ‘Tsar’, said “schools that had “cracked the code” on social mobility use the pupil premium strategically, build a high-expectations culture, focus on the quality of"
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Mental Health

Whole person Whole school Whole lot of impact

20 Jun 2017