Schools spend a lot of time and resources developing skills and knowledge in their staff. While some of it gets embedded in procedures and policies, most of it lives in the heads, hands and hearts of individual teachers and teaching assistants. As time passes, much of this institutional expertise can diminish or disappear altogether as staff leave the school for a variety of reasons.

This is a common feature of admissions for children with SEND. Parents report to me that some schools express nervousness about admitting their child because they’ve never taught someone with, say, Down syndrome before and are unsure of what to do. 

If colleagues have never taught a child with a particular set of needs before, then it can feel like they’re flying blindfolded. They need the safety net of support, encouragement and training from school leaders and a commitment to listening to and learning from the parents if their confidence is to grow.

I am reminded of the first arrest I made as a special constable with Thames Valley Police. I arrested a teenager for theft of a motor vehicle and I still remember how scared I was at the time. I was scared of getting it wrong in front of my trusted and respected colleagues. But they had coached me well, so my confidence developed and over time I became far more self-assured.

Succession planning

I suspect that many of us underestimate the amount of institutional expertise resting with individual teaching assistants in our schools. Do you have just one member of staff who is trained in Numicon? British sign language? Vagus nerve stimulators? Administration of epilepsy medication? Restrictive physical intervention? Pathological demand avoidance? This can be the root of problems arising in schools over time.

In its 2013 report, the Office of the Children’s Commissioner found that “2.7 per cent of schools have sent children with statements of SEN home when their carer, classroom support or teaching assistant is unavailable”.  This cannot be right. Leaders need to build succession planning into their training so that we don’t end up in the situation where a child is denied education for a period of time because of the absence of one member of staff.

It is self-evidently a good thing if as many people as possible feel confident in dealing with as wide a range of needs as possible. In this way, we can avoid the situations where schools, as the Children’s Commissioner found in its 2014 report, tell prospective parents: “It might be best if you looked elsewhere.”

Jarlath O’Brien is headteacher of Carwarden House Community School in Surrey