The Department for Education has announced a new steering group to guide the SEND review and for the first time publicly named those taking part. It is reassuring to see members from several government departments and other key sector bodies. The limited specialist and mainstream school representation is of concern and the lack of independent parental engagement will raise eyebrows for many.
Will Quince MP, the new minister for SEND, wrote in an open letter to young people and parents that he wants to reduce local variation, improve early intervention and most importantly, ensure there is funding and accountability in place to deliver what is needed.
While the evidence from Ofsted, the Education Select Committee inquiry into SEND and others has been clear these need to be priorities, there is still a great deal of uncertainty for schools. In my role as a governor and trustee and in discussions with colleagues, there appears to be three overriding priorities the government needs to get right to help schools, their pupils and families.
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1. Equity of provision and resources
SEND funding is notoriously complex and opaque. Local thresholds for accessing specialist support and settings vary enormously. Banding for support and other local policies make a mockery of the idea that there is a cohesive SEND system in England. School trusts working across multiple authorities are hard-pressed to rationalise divergence in the availability of specialists, such as educational psychology services to the detriment of the support they can provide. This is driving some to invest in their own specialist teams to simply provide the basics.
To overcome these issues, the government should at very least provide central guidance on thresholds for a statutory assessment. In my view, it should go much further and remove the ability of local authorities to set their own limits.
Only a nationally coordinated commissioning network can enable both a robust and cohesive system that can end geographical disparities. Led by regional commissioners, such a system could more effectively and efficiently provide the services schools need to educate their pupils with SEND.
2. Consistency in identification and support
Accurate, complete and timely identification is an issue for the sector. The Education Policy Institute’s report on identification should put to rest any further debates about the effectiveness of these procedures. The review could give clarity to what might constitute a sufficient level of difficulty to qualify as SEND, although this is unlikely given the complex nature of diagnostic criteria which are often contested.
Therefore, the review should lead schools away from relying on labels to qualify for SEN support in particular. Instead, schools should be encouraged to understand the precise nature of educational difficulties and address them effectively through high-quality teaching and structured interventions. For young people with more severe or complex needs, there needs to be greater involvement of health and care professionals to work with schools holistically.
3. Transparency in decision making
We can no longer permit decision making which fails to foreground the experiences of young people and their parents, especially on funding and policy arrangements.
The lack of equity and consistency, particularly between local authorities but also within schools is at least in part due to a lack of transparency in decision making. National guidance on thresholds should be achievable because there cannot be any disagreement on the educational outcomes of young people with SEND.
The government and wider sector have a clear interest in agreeing on criteria and thresholds for support. School trusts with the expertise and capacity can again play an important role in doing so, as they have with many other aspects of governance.
The review should be evidence-led and values-driven to achieve its objectives and there is an obvious opportunity here for the department to practice what it preaches on co-production. But we also need leaders with the courage to see this through on the ground.
The review steering group should embrace all three elements of equity, consistency and transparency. A failure to deliver through the review and any subsequent reforms will erode trust, maintain significant pressures across the system and do nothing for young people, their schools or the government’s own agenda.
Chris Rossiter is the chief executive of the Driver Youth Trust
