SEND News
- Written by: Lindsey Rousseau
Today, the Secretary of State for Education announced additional high needs funding for Local Authorities, alongside the 2019-20 Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) allocations to local authorities. The government is providing a further £125 million in 2018-19 and £125 million of high needs funding for 2019-20, recognising the current pressures on high needs budgets.
Accompanying this, he announced a further £100 million top-up to the Special Provision Capital Fund for local authorities in 2019-20, to take the total investment to £365 million across 2018-21, helping Local Authorities invest in improved facilities and additional school and college places, for children and young people with SEND.
Additionally, the Secretary of State has announced a package of non-funding measures. This announcement includes:
- · lifting the cap on the number of special and alternative provision free school bids that will be approved as part of the current wave;
- · funding the training of three more cohorts of Educational Psychologist trainees, starting in September 2020, and increasing the number of trainees from 160 to at least 206, to reflect increased demand;
- · the establishment and detail of the SEND System Leadership Board, as recommended in the Lenehan review, which will work to improve joint working and commissioning in local areas; and establishing regular joint Ministerial roundtables with the Department for Health and Social Care to give providers, users and voluntary sector organisations further opportunities to input their views and insight across the SEND system;
- · reviewing current SEND content in Initial Teacher Training provision (ITT) and building on our existing SEND specialist qualifications to develop a continuum of learning from ITT, through teachers’ early careers and into specialist and leadership roles in support of the upcoming Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy;
- · holding, in early 2019, an evidence-gathering exercise on the financial incentives in the current arrangements, in particular on the operation and use of mainstream schools’ notional SEN budget, which pays for the costs of special educational provision up to £6,000; and
- · commissioning SEN Futures, a long-term research package assessing the value for money of SEN provision in England and analysing the impact of current provision on children and young people’s outcomes. Procurement for the first pieces of work in this programme has begun today: more details on this can be found here.
The Secretary of State’s letter to local authorities, detailing these announcements, can be found here.
Minister Zahawi’s letter to Dame Christine Lenehan, providing further detail on the SEND System Leadership Board, can be found here
- Written by: Lindsey Rousseau
- Written by: Lindsey Rousseau
Today, the Government announced an extension of the review of its autism strategy to cover children and young people, as well as adults. The review will inform the new joint adults and children autism strategy to be published in autumn 2019.
The review is looking at:
- · joining up health, care and education services to address autistic children’s needs holistically
- · developing diagnostic services to diagnose autism earlier, in line with clinical guidance
- · improving the transition between children and adult services so that no young people miss out, and ending inappropriate reliance on inpatient hospital care
- · improving understanding of autism and all its profiles, including recently identified forms such as pathological demand avoidance (PDA)
You can find further details here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-review-to-improve-the-lives-of-autistic-children.
Today, the Government is also responding to the report by the report by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Autism and the National Autistic Society - Autism and Education in England 2017.
- Written by: Lindsey Rousseau
The Department for Education has announced a programme of revisits to those local areas which were asked to produce a WSoA following their SEND inspections.
The revisits programme is due to start in December 2018 and will run alongside the current programme of local area SEND inspections, which is in place until 2021.
The revisits do not represent a re-inspection of SEN provision. Inspectors from Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) will only revisit those areas which were asked to produce a WSoA and the focus of the visit will be on the progress made since the original inspection.
Revisits will allow Ofsted and the CQC to assess the progress which local areas have made against each of the actions in their WSoA. They will also provide additional reassurance to families on the progress local services are making, identify where further work is needed, and enable local areas to demonstrate the improvements they have made to SEND services and in delivering better outcomes for children and young people.
Local areas will usually be revisited within 18 months of their WSoA having been accepted as fit for purpose by Ofsted and CQC. The local area will receive 10 days’ notification of the revisit, which will last between 2-4 days, depending on the number of actions in the WSoA. A report will be published on the Ofsted and CQC websites, usually 33 days after the inspectors have finished the revisit. It will set out whether the local area has made sufficient progress against each area of the WSoA.
Where a local area is considered to have made sufficient progress against its WSoA, monitoring visits from the DfE and NHS England will cease. DfE and NHS England will determine on a case by case basis the next steps for any local areas that have made insufficient progress. This may include the Secretary of State using his powers of intervention.
The methodology for the revisits can be found on the Ofsted website at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/local-area-send-inspection-framework and will be included in the local area SEND inspection handbook in spring 2019.
- Written by: Paul Simpson (BATOD)
The National SEND Forum (NSEND), on which NatSIP is represented through BATOD, has sent a letter about the implications of educational funding cuts on children and young people with SEN and Disability to Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The letter can be found here for your interest and information.
Paul Simpson, National Executive Officer and Magazine Editor, BATOD
- Written by: Lindsey Rousseau
Following the 2017 review of disagreement resolution arrangements, the Department for Education commissioned Mott MacDonald, as part of the Delivering Better Outcomes Together (DBOT) consortium, to develop and publish a guide for young people aged 16-25 on how to resolve special educational needs and disability (SEND) disagreements. Mott MacDonald worked with a range of organisations and groups, including the young people’s group FLARE, to produce the guide.
The guide ‘When people can’t agree – Special Educational Needs and Disability Complaints: a guide for Young People in education’ can be found here - https://www.sendpathfinder.co.uk/send-complaints-a-guide-for-young-people-in-education.
The guide provides advice and information about how young people who are unhappy with the support they are getting for their special educational needs or disability can find the right help and advice to resolve their issues. The guide explains who young people can go to for support and the steps to take.
The guide is aimed at young people with SEND, their families and the individuals and organisations that provide them with support.
Please share this guide with your networks and anyone you think would be interested in the guide. If you have any questions relating to the guide please contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
- Written by: Lindsey Rousseau
In December 2016, the Department for Education asked Dame Christine Lenehan to lead an independent review of the experiences and outcomes of children and young people in residential special schools and colleges.
Her report ‘Good Intentions, Good Enough?’ was published in November 2017 and the Government committed to respond more fully to the findings in 2018.
Damian Hinds, Secretary of State for Education, wrote to Dame Christine with the Government’s formal response to her review.
A copy of the report and this letter can be found here.
- Written by: Lindsey Rousseau
The DfE have today (16 July 2018) published their July SEND Newsletter.
You can find it pdf here.
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