The co-chair of the government’s expert panel for special educational needs and disabilities has warned that creating too many different support packages for pupils risks undermining the system’s ability to deliver planned reforms.
Tom Rees’ comments come as he helps to lead the Department for Education’s work to create specialist provision packages setting out the support that young people with the most complex SEND should receive, based on their needs.
Earlier this year the government published an indicative list of seven packages - but some experts have raised concerns that certain areas of need, such as around mental health, had been missed.
And last week a senior DfE official indicated at the Vlog SEND show that “it would be fine” for more packages to be created.
But speaking to Vlog this week, Mr Rees, co-chair of a panel tasked with developing the packages and inclusion standards, expressed a note of caution.
He said: “What’s the right number of packages?
“We want to make sure that there are enough to make sure there is a comprehensive offer in the system and that children don’t fall between the gaps, but also not so many that we create a complexity that means the system can’t be delivered or implemented well.”
‘Sustainable’ SEND reforms
Mr Rees, who is CEO of Ormiston Academies Trust, said there was a consensus that one of the problems with the most recent set of government SEND reforms, introduced in 2014, was “that the system wasn’t able to implement” them.
The Labour government launched its plan for SEND reform earlier this year amid warnings that the current system was failing too many young people with SEND and driving councils into massive financial deficits.
Mr Rees said: “One of the things I feel a responsibility for, but also see as an opportunity, is for us to make sure that this time all this energy and opportunity we have to reform the SEND system puts it on a much longer-term and sustainable footing, and by sustainable I mean a system that doesn’t need huge reform again in five or 10 years’ time.”
The specialist provision packages will underpin education, health and care plans (EHCPs) under Labour’s plans.
The reforms will create three tiers of support: targeted and targeted plus for pupils in mainstream schools, and then a specialist tier for pupils in both mainstream and special schools.
The specialist support packages will be for pupils on the specialist tier.
Vlog asked Mr Rees whether separate packages would be created for students in mainstream and special schools.
He said that this was one of the areas the panel was “considering really carefully”.
The panel has also been tasked with creating a set of national inclusion standards to support the system.
Mr Rees said his “biggest hope” for this panel’s work and wider reforms is “for a better system that delivers education and support for children with special educational needs to a higher standard, more consistently and in an evidence-based way”.
It is important for this to lead to a system “with higher trust and confidence for parents, professionals and, ultimately, for children”, he said.
“I think this point about trust and confidence is really central to me,” he added.
Need for evidence-based approaches
Mr Rees also pointed to the need for SEND provision to be evidence-led, but highlighted the challenges in achieving this.
“For professionals, taking an evidence-based approach, so that we can give teachers and professionals in the system clearer, better and more consistent advice and guidance, is what we’re trying to do”.
He said that this will mean “leaning on evidence where it exists, being clear where we can say what works, but also being honest and open about where evidence is less strong”.
“Lots of the areas that the panel is dealing with are contested areas and where more research might be needed, but also where research may never answer questions definitively,” he said.
