govenor anual report

[darky]

hi there, i have just been glancing through the govenors anual report for my sons school, and ive just noticed that the specified "sen teaching assistants" have multiple roles.

for example, one of the sen ta's is a dinner lady and first aider AND a librarian. does this mean that their entire wages can be put down as sen spending?? or just the "sen" part??

[helenl53]

Good question to ask!!!!

 

In a fair world this should be pro-rata but I suspect that it comes out of the SEN pot in total.

 

Of course this would diminish the pot so they would not have a lot left for Outreach, Training and buying in services from the LEA.

 

It is not unreasonable to ask for a breakdown of the SEN spend - then ask questions.

 

Love

 

Mouth

[darky]

hi helen, this is what i suspect! also have asked the kids if they know the other sen ta's and about 7 of the sen ta's mentioned, none of my kids have heard of! strangley the ones that dont have multiple roles. ooooooo helen, i would so love to uncover a sen spending scandle at that school!!

[Kazzen161]

In our school the Librarian hours, etc woudl not come out of the SEN budget. In fact, our LSA's cost more than our SEN budget, so much of the cost comes out of the general school budget.

 

Our County has the school budgets and the more detailed SEN budgets published on the CC website. They make very interesting reading.

 

Karen

[Helen]

Darky,

 

Do you know the official figures/percentages which state how many SEN children there are on the school roll?

 

You could ask the school for a copy of its SEN audit form - ask for the summary version, this way you'd be asking for impersonal data. The summary should detail:

* the National Curriculum age groups

* the number of children on roll within each age group

* the SEN stages

* the number of children on each SEN stage.

 

Although this information would not be specific in relation to how the head actually spends his SEN budget it should give you some idea about how many SEN children your head is accommodating/the degree of their SEN.

 

Procedure wise, I'm not sure whom you would need to approach for an audit summary; I had cause to demand this documentation from the COG.

Edited January 8, 2006 by Helen

[phasmid]

The information Helen suggests you want may be found via this google search page, try the teachernet link first. You may be able to find individual school data this way, I don't know for sure - I've never looked for it. This is where i'd start though.

 

HTH

[pumpkinpie]

On the sen report part of our schools governors report the nos of children at the differnt stages is included. Not the class they are in as that could identify students

[LKS]

Good luck finding this info darky. When I was trying to find out similar info last year it was greeted with as much enthusiasm as if I had asked for details of the Heads love life. I must admit I backed down on this as I was involved in too many other wrangles. I did find out some interesting info in my daughter's sen records held by the LEA. The head had done a lovely little spread sheet detailing just how much my daughter was costing the school. In this was detailed how much time the senco spent planning and preparing her lessons and how much this cost (about ?32 pounds an hour!!). I pointed out that I thought the teacher was responsible for planning lessons and the L.S.A's would help with the preparation. You can imagine how well this went down. I got the idea for searching the sen records at the LEA from someone who had posted on the TES website and was having very similar problems with the sen budget. Sorry to ramble and I hope you find out something useful

[pumpkinpie]

Where did you get the info from ? By asking the lea or school?

[LKS]

Hi PP I contacted my SN officer at the LEA. At first they had to speak to their legal dept. to see if I was entitled to see the records They then invited me in and I had a look through. They insisted that I would have copies of everything there but of course I didn't and ended up asking for 22 copies. Because I have also asked to see records held by the school I think I'm building up quite a comprehensive record now.

[nvapid]

sorry to sound very predudiced, but is there anybody else who is overjoyed at the prospect of their kids SEN assistant being the dinner lady?

[phasmid]

A word of caution...I started my school life as a volunteer and then became a Mid-day supervisor. Just because someone is doing both jobs (TA and MDS) it can be a dangerous assumption that they have no training/qualifications/experience!

[Kazzen161]

My County Council (LEA) has the schools budgets on it's website including the SEN breakdown. It has some intersting info on it.

 

Karen

[jomica]

I'm a governor at our local school and we employ a number of support assistants who work with specific children with statements of special needs. My son has one of them.

 

A number of the support assistants do have different roles besides their support hours, but these aren't funded from our SEN budget.

 

One of the things to remember about support assistants is that they have very unsafe jobs, which are basically reviewed annually at the time of the annual review. Our children have some hours taken away from them .... so does the support assistant. A school like ours couldn't hope to make up the difference. When things like this happen, the support assistant may look out for some extra hours to make up the difference - for example, lunchtime supervisor roles.

 

My son's support assistant started at full-time hours and is now down to about two thirds of that - to be reviewed again very soon and, no doubt, the LEA will want to take away more hours, leaving her with even fewer hours to work in school. She may be lucky and pick up another child's statemented hours in addition to those she has with my son, or may not be lucky and will go and look for another job elsewhere