TRY NOT TO EYE-ROLL (POST ABOUT THE SEND REVIEW)

As an alumni of University of Reading {Politics & International Relations} I am disillusioned by the current political landscape.

Even people who enter the political system with good intentions, tend to go a bit ‘off’ after a while as they get eaten up by controversy, ego, greed and foolish errors that show they are just like the rest of us. But I need to pay attention to the SEND Review Green paper, which is out for consultation. Policies around Special Educational Needs, the criminal justice system and education are bound tightly in discrimination of children of black, African, Caribbean heritage, who are over-represented in terms of school exclusions, harsher punishments at school, later diagnoses for autism, ADHD and other neurodivergent conditions, the list goes on.

“Outcomes for children and young people with SEND or in alternative provision are consistently worse than their peers across every measure.” SEND REVIEW

ALTERNATIVE PROVISION

To help you overcome your urge to eye-roll, here is a summary of the SEND Review’s key proposals:

1. Merge /incorporate SEN & Alternative Provision in a more streamlined, consistent system.
2. Create new SEND partnerships.
3. Support parents and carers to express an informed preference for a suitable placement by providing a tailored list of settings, including mainstream, specialist and independent – they will continue to have the right to request a mainstream setting for their childThis will include setting out when needs can and should be met effectively in mainstream provision, and the support that should be made ordinarily available in mainstream settings to facilitate this. This will also bring clarity to the circumstances in which a child or young person needs an EHCP, and additionally whether their needs should be met in a specialist setting (including alternative provision). 
4. Introduce standardised and digital EHCP process.
5. Streamline despite process, including mandatory mediation.

The proposal of creating a blended system of alternative provision and SEND provision, takes my mind back to the era in the 1970’s when hundreds of black children – mostly children of Caribbean heritage whose parents were ‘Windrush’ post-war invitees to Britain – were sent to school for the educationally sub-normal due to ‘unruly’ behaviours. A sizeable proportion of these children had undiagnosed special educational needs or were experiencing significant trauma. I am most interested to know how such actions can be prevented in the new proposals. I am all for consistency, reducing waiting times for assessments and making sure that appropriate support is available exactly when and where it is needed, but in order to reduce the risk of undiagnosed children being mis-directed, I would need to know the following:

• Will the parent voice be heard and believed in the assessment process?
• Will the parent voice be heard and listened to as decisions about mainstream or specialist school are discussed? (In many real-life situations, schools state they can’t support a child in a mainstream setting)
• Will parents have access to psychologists’ reports on their children?
• How will teacher and psychologist bias be taken into account in assessments/recommendations?
• Will parents have a right to appeal decisions made about placements if they disagree with aspects of the decision-making process?
  

If you would like to respond to the consultation, you can find out how to do this here

Thank you for reading – these are my views and you are entitled to have yours heard… although there are many issues within the system, part of me still feels that participating is still better than opting out entirely..

© Suzy Rowland