19th December 2018 9:00
By Blue Tutors
Ofsted has referred to the number of children with special educational needs who are missing out on financial support as a “national scandal”. Reported on the BBC, there are 2,060 students in 2018 who have education, health and care plans (EHCs) which explain what they each need, who receive no help. Parents have claimed that it is only once a student is excluded from school that they are assessed.
There are 1.3 million students in England with SEND (special educational needs and disability), but only a quarter of a million have an EHC to help them. In the period between 2010 and 2017 the number of students with an EHC who received no support increased fivefold to 4,000, but this has now been cut to the above figure of 2,060. This means that more than 99% of pupils with an EHC are receiving support, but Ms Spielman, England’s chief inspector of schools says that one child missing out on support would be bad, but thousands is a “scandal”.
Another concern is the number of pupils who are unaccounted for in school statistics and that these pupils are some of the most vulnerable in the country. Roughly 10,000 pupils have disappeared from school registers, and whereas many of these students may have been moved to independent schools, or are being tutored at home, that isn’t the case for all of them. The report questions whether schools illegally remove students from school registers in years 10 and 11 when those students have been labelled difficult to teach.
In 2014 a new system was introduced to help SEND students. Each was to be individually assessed and given an EHC. However, this put added pressure on schools who haven’t been able to meet that target, and since 2015 the number of students for whom an assessment was requested increased by 50%. In 2017 45,200 students were assessed and given an EHC plan, while 14,600 were refused an assessment. It’s claimed that part of the problem is that too many students are being identified as having SEND, and this leads to many students with the highest level of need being overlooked or under supported. Schools would prefer a system where those needing the most help were identified better and prioritised.