SEN Exclusions

[oracle]

Well 'we' are already aware of this.

 

Carole

 

Scandal of secret school exclusions

 

Confidential letter reveals that local education authorities are deliberately breaking the law to avoid paying for special needs children

 

Amelia Hill, culture and society correspondent

Sunday December 11, 2005

The Observer

 

 

Up to 20,000 of the most vulnerable children are being excluded from school every day. The reason? Local education authorities are trying to save money, it is claimed.

The Observer has seen a confidential letter by Ian Coates, head of the special educational needs and disability division at the Department for Education and Skills, admitting that authorities are guilty of deliberate breaches of the law. After hearing of the letter, John Wright, of the Independent Panel For Special Educational Needs (Ipsea), said: 'It is very expensive for LEAs to provide special needs children with the support they need to take part in mainstream schooling, so they try to get out of supplying it in a variety of ways.

 

'When these children don't get the classroom support they need, their behaviour can become too disruptive and the children end up being sent home,' said Wright, who helped more than 3,000 parents to complain against special needs decisions by local authorities last year.

 

If a council considers a child to have special educational needs that cannot be met by their school, it has a legal obligation to assess that pupil and give them a Statement of Educational Need. This must define the type and frequency of help to be provided.

 

The Observer, however, has uncovered a number of loopholes. The most common is for the authority to produce statements that do not specify the care each child should receive from their school.

 

This is a tactic Coates admits in his letter is common: 'In some cases, authorities ... leave provision open to the school to determine ... without specifying the [specific] provision [necessary] to meet children's individual needs.'

 

Other councils introduce blanket definitions of special needs categories, such as one authority now being investigated for refusing to use the term 'dyslexic' for pupils unless their reading, writing and spelling are all five years below their chronological age.

 

Some are refusing to assess children at all. According to Chris Gravell, from the independent charity the Advisory Centre for Education, 36,200 children among its members were refused statements in 1998, against 26,000 in 2004.

 

Coates writes in the leaked letter, sent to all chief education officers and directors of children's services in England and Wales two weeks ago: 'Having a policy that assessments will not be undertaken for particular groups of children or certain types of needs, in our view constitutes a blanket policy that prevents the consideration of children's needs individually and on their merits.'

 

The Observer has discovered that children with statements of special educational need are nine times more likely to be excluded than those without. Pupils as young as five are regularly sent home for up to 45 days at a time.

 

The Commons Education and Skills Select Committee is investigating provision for children with special needs in schools, focusing on whether they should be taught in mainstream or in special schools.

 

But it has so far failed to address the scandal of exclusions affecting tens of thousands of children a year, a number that Ipsea says has exploded in the last five years and is continuing to increase.

 

Recent figures show two thirds of permanent exclusions involve children with special needs. Information gathered by Ipsea reveals that, while exclusions of pupils without special needs have fallen by 579 in the past year, exclusions of those with special needs have risen by 334, or 6 per cent.

 

There has been a sharp rise in parents' appeals against LEA decisions; from 30 per cent of all appeals in 1997-98 to over 40 per cent in 2002-03.