Re: Assessment and funding of provision

[barefoot wend]

Sorry this is rather long - but thought it may be of interest and some may like to follow it up or discuss.

 

Found this info on the Parents Centre website whilst trawling the net.

 

Have copied - hope that's okay.

 

John Wright

Thu May 24, 2007 2:45 PM

 

 

Member

Posts: 2

Joined: May 2007

 

Last year the House of Commons Education and Skills Committee recommended that: ?the link must be broken between assessment and funding of provision?, rightly identifying what the Committee called an ?an inbuilt conflict of interest?. This conflict impacts not just on parents and children. Special educational needs professionals also suffer, because of the pressure Local Authorities put on them as employees not to record in their assessment advice their full and honest opinions on children?s needs and the provision required to meet them.

 

Although the Government initially rejected the recommendation, the Committee Chair, Barry Sheerman MP, managed this January to persuade the Minister to reconsider it. In return, Sheerman agreed that his Committee would come up with some practical suggestions on how the separation of duties could be achieved, without the need for the establishment of a new agency. In turn, the Committee issued a press release asking for ideas on how separation can be achieved.

 

The deadline for submissions to the Select Committee is June 25th. There is no guarantee that the Select Committee will chose any particular proposals to forward to the Government; and no guarantee that the Government will accept any particular proposals put to the by the Committee. But if it were possible for a group of parents and professionals (a large group, hopefully!) to agree a particular set of proposals and send these to the Select Committee, then there is at least a chance that this might influence the Committee, and the Government in due course.

 

So, in the hope that we can debate and agree a set on proposals on this website, here is a ?draft? proposal to start the ball rolling:

 

The Government have made it clear that are not asking for proposals which would involve the creation of a new public body or quango. So, of the existing bodies, I believe the most appropriate to perform the assessment of needs function would be the Department for Education and Skills. It would need to establish a panel of assessors (including educational psychologists, speech therapists, occupational therapists, specialist teachers, etc) and a team of statement writers, to analyse professional advice and translate it into the legal format of the Statement. The Department has the advantage of being democratically accountable, plus it has legal powers of enforcement and so could ensure (through the courts if necessary) that its independent assessments and statements would be honoured by Local Authorities.

 

Other bodies have been suggested as repositories for the assessment function (SENDIST and OFSTED, for example), but they lack formal accountability and legal powers of enforcement. It has also been suggested that Local Authorities could themselves establish regional panels of professionals for assessment and statement writing, which would guarantee independence by ensuring that professionals would not become involved in assessing children for whom their employer is responsible. But again, problems of accountability and enforcement arise. As well as the suspicion of deals being struck between Authorities (?You gag your professionals when they?re assessing our children and we?ll gag ours vice versa?).

 

Using the Department, an already existing body with already existing accountability and enforcement powers, would remove the need for wholesale change to the legal framework. But there are some small changes of detail to the law which would be needed if the separation of duties were to produce the desired result - children actually receiving the provision required to meet their needs.

 

First, the Regulations setting out the content of professional advice for assessment should be amended to make it absolutely clear that advice must describe the child?s needs and both the type and the amount of provision required to meet them. The drafters of statements cannot hope to produce honest and accurate documents unless they are informed by professional opinion on the amount of special educational provision a child?s needs call for. And parents have a right to expect to be told the professionals? opinions on the amount of extra help their children need.

 

Second, the law setting out the content of statements (5) should be amended in order that Part 3 specifies the type and quantifies the amount of help to be provided. All statements should unambiguously quantify the special educational provision which a child requires. Regardless of who has written it, a vague statement cannot protect the level of provision a child needs. The separation of duties will be an empty gesture unless the law covering the content of statements is tightened up.

 

Third, the Regulations covering the procedure for Annual Review should be amended in order to require professionals contributing to statement reviews to set out their opinion on whether the amount of provision specified in a statement remains appropriate or whether it needs amending

 

Fourth, obviously a change in the law would be needed to switch the decision to assess a child from Local Authorities to the DfES, but in the interests of swift intervention, an amendment is needed to ensure that where both school and parents make the request, assessment is automatic, and never refused.

 

To summarise: I am suggesting that the Department for Education and Skills undertakes assessment of children?s needs and writes Statements of Special Educational Needs, which then must in law be honoured by Local Authorities.

 

Plus, I am suggesting 4 specific, small amendments to the existing law (the Education Act 1996 and the 2001 Regulations) to ensure that the benefits of separating the duties to assess and provide will be realised in practice.

 

Comments please.

John Wright

 

For information: The Select Committee has asked that submissions should arrive no later than noon on Monday 25 June 2007. A guide for written submissions to the Committee can be found at: http://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/witnessguide.pdf. Submissions should include at the beginning a short paragraph or set of bullet points setting out the main issues addressed in the memorandum. A copy of the submission should be sent by e-mail to edskillscom@parliament.uk with an additional paper copy to:

Education and Skills Select Committee, House of Commons, 7 Millbank, London SW1P 3JA. The Committee is not intending to take oral evidence on this subject.