Are you working in special education needs and disabilities (SEND) in, say, a secondary school or academy? Are you struggling, as usual, to put in place the support (let alone the targeted funding) for that child with multiple needs?
At such times you might in the past have looked jealously at the provision available in higher education. How come that dyslexic student you never managed to get a laptop is handed one on the first day at university? The grass on that side of the fence used to look very green in comparison.
No longer, I’d suggest. The Disabled Students’ Allowance (DSA) system is about to undergo a radical shake-up that government boasts will make it more efficient (hmm) and (ah, here’s the real reason!) save some £29 million a year. Envy is not the appropriate emotion any more: Schadenfreude would be unhelpful.
It looks as if help for those with particular needs post-18 faces meltdown.
I know, everyone says that about their particular area of interest when cuts threaten: although here I declare no interest (apart from being married to someone working in SEND in FE) beyond that of an intense dislike of seeing injustices perpetrated, even more when they are presented as improvements.
The government carried out a consultation last autumn: some 200 organisations and individuals working in the field contributed. Its response made a few concessions, but not many. Now higher education institutions (HEIs) have a year to plan how they will support students from their own resources, discrete funding having been withdrawn: yes, the government’s done it again, pushing the problem down to the institutional level and claiming they’re given enough money to solve it.
Bureaucratic ‘tug of war’
Information from DnA (Diversity and Ability), a social enterprise formed by former DSA recipients, suggests that DSA will no longer fund key forms of support including: adjustments to accommodation on campus; provision of some equipment associated with laptop use; and many forms of support work, including library assistance, scribing for exams and note-taking. They will, however, be able to appeal through a new “exceptional case process”. As DnA’s Adam Hyland (a former disabled students officer for the NUS students’ union) commented: “This risks leaving students caught up in a bureaucratic funding tug of war.”
It may sound as if this is all about equipment and facilities. It isn’t. A profound effect will be felt in the provision of non-medical helper support, which comprises all those tutors (I’ll stick to that title) who help with scribing, reading, note-taking and dealing with various specific learning difficulties that include things like dyslexia. These vital cogs in the machine of DSA provision (many represented by ADSHE, the Association of Dyslexia Specialists in Higher Education) are already feeling the cuts.
The government’s cunning plan to reduce costs masquerades as a form of quality assurance. Students deemed to qualify for such support must obtain tenders from at least two registered providers (there’s a fee for registering). They will be under pressure to go for the cheaper quote. Already rates of pay for tutors are being slashed, for example, by Randstad, a big provider of non-medical helper services.
Falling pay
It’s difficult to predict what will happen, and this isn’t my area of expertise, but it’s hard to see how students who need learning support will cope with a requirement to embark on a bureaucratic process to get it. I suspect many will just not apply, or lose heart and give up on it.
Moreover, as pay rates fall, it seems to me inevitable that tutors operating as individuals will first be squeezed out by the big providers: next, even the agencies will be unable to recruit quality staff because, having participated in reducing fee levels, they will have played their part in driving such people out of the field.
I’m not entirely anti-austerity: I don’t think society should live beyond its means. But this is the mean-spirited choice of a soft, largely invisible target for cuts which threaten to blight the education and thus the life chances of a significant number of needy students.
It’s callous, cynical even: and it’s wrong.
Dr Bernard Trafford (pictured is headteacher of Newcastle upon Tyne Royal Grammar School and a former chairman of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference. The views expressed here are personal. He tweets at @bernardtrafford
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