The SEND Code of Practice 0-25 Years

Policy, Provision and Practice

Rona Tutt, Paul Williams, Author

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781473907973, 9781473907966
• eBook ISBN: 9781473927186
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Inclusive Education

How have you found the changes brought about by the new SEND Code of Practice: 0-25 years (2014)? 

This book is the ultimate guide to making sure that you are not only meeting the requirements, but are improving outcomes for children and young people as well.

Written for all professionals working in the field, it covers:

·         The broader Children and Families Act (2014)

·         The role of the local authority

·         Guidance on all the key changes that school leaders, SENCO?s, and staff are concerned about

·         Case studies of settings across the 0-25 age range, including maintained schools, academies, free schools, and specialist and alternative provision.

Whether you work in education, health, or social care, or are training to do so, this book will genuinely improve your provision and practice for children and young people with SEND.

Part One Policy

1 How the SEN Framework changed

Chapter overview

This chapter traces the background to the changes that started to be implemented from September 2014, in line with the 2014 and 2015 SENDs Codes of Practice. It outlines how SEN has evolved since the time of Warnock and the 1981 Education Act.

It explains how the Codes themselves have changed from the five-stage model of the first code, to the four-stage model of the code that was in existence from 2001 to August 2014.

It states why a change to the SEN Framework which necessitated a new SEND Code of Practice was thought to be necessary and what the changes hoped to achieve.

The background

The year 2014 was a landmark in the lives of young people who have special educational needs or disabilities (SEND) and their families, as it heralded the most comprehensive overhaul of the system for over 30 years. The change in the way the special needs system operates was a result of the Children and Families Act (2014), which meant that a new SEND Code of Practice needed to be written and implemented from September 2014. To understand the significance of a change that has been described as the biggest shake-up of the system for over 30 years, it may be helpful to start with a reminder of the SEN Framework that had been in place since the 1980s.

How the previous system arose

A few years after the Education Act of 1970, which brought all children into the education system for the first time, Mary Warnock (who later became Baroness Warnock), was invited by the government of the day to chair a committee to look into the education that ‘handicapped’ children (as they were described at the time) were receiving. Subsequently, the Report of the Committee of Enquiry into the Education of Handicapped Children and Young People (DES, 1978) was published. It was the work of this committee that resulted in the term ‘handicapped’ being replaced by ‘special educational needs’.

The Warnock Committee’s use of the term ‘SEN’ was partly to move away from concentrating too heavily on placing a child with a handicap in a category of need, (‘educationally subnormal’ and ‘maladjusted’ were two of the terms used at the time), rather than seeing each child as an individual who has individual needs. Secondly, the term SEN was used to encompass a much wider range of pupils who, although their needs may be less significant, still benefit from support to overcome any barriers to learning.

The Report resulted in the Education Act of 1981, which is remembered largely for setting out the statementing procedures that remained in place until statements were replaced by Education, Health and Care Plans (EHC Plans) from September 2014. This was a well-intentioned move to safeguard the provision for the 2% or so of pupils with the most complex needs. The downside was that it did little to take on board the needs of the 18% identified by Warnock as having less complex special needs, but still requiring some support.

The first SEN Code of Practice

However, the needs of the whole SEN continuum were addressed in the first version of the SEN Code of Practice which was published in 1994 (Code of Practice on the Identification and Assessment of Special Educational Needs (DfE, 1994)). This set out a five-stage model:

• Stage 1 Following initial concerns by a teacher, parent, or professional from health or social services, the child should be placed on an SEN register and receive support within the classroom.
• Stage 2 If insufficient progress is being made, the special educational needs co-ordinator (SENCO) should be involved and an Individual Education Plan (IEP) drawn up.
• Stage 3 Where there is still a lack of progress, the Local Education Authority (LEA) should be informed and Support Services consulted, who help to draw up a new IEP.
• Stage 4 If the concerns continue, the pupil should be considered for a formal assessment, which the LEA carries out if it is felt that the child might need a statement.
• Stage 5 If, following the formal assessment, the LEA decides that it needs to determine the special educational provision the child needs, a statement of special educational needs will be drawn up.

The Code also outlined the role of the SENCO and assumed that this would be ‘a designated teacher’ (paragraph 2.14). When the Code was updated in 2001, it was suggested that the role should be viewed as equivalent to a literacy or numeracy co-ordinator in a primary school, or a head of department or head of year in a secondary school.

A change of century and a second code of practice

The turn of the century saw two significant events: the 2001 Special Educational Needs and Disability Act (sometimes referred to as ‘SENDA’) and, in the same year, Special Educational Needs: Code of Practice (DfES, 2001b), which was an updated version of the 1994 Code. After the Act, ‘SEN’ was replaced increasingly by ‘SEN and disability’ or SEND. However the overlap between SEN and disability has never been clearly defined, so both SEN and SEND continue to be used.

The 2001 Code of Practice described children’s needs under four broad headings:

1. Communication and interaction
2. Cognition and learning
3. Behaviour, emotional and social development (BESD)
4. Physical or sensory impairment.

As mentioned previously, three of these have been retained in the current Code, with BESD being replaced by ‘Social, emotional and mental health difficulties’. The reasons behind this change are given in Chapter 3 of this book and comments on the change from BESD to SEMH appear as part of the case studies in Parts 2 and 3.

The Code also reduced the graduated response from five to four stages, although the terminology of stages was no longer used. Putting pupils on an SEN register was no longer seen as a necessary first step, although many schools continued to have a register. Stages two and three became School Action and School Action Plus:

• School Action A child is put on this level if s/he is making inadequate progress and needs interventions that are additional to, or different from, those provided as part of a differentiated curriculum. These could be recorded in a Group Education Plan rather than an IEP, if a group of children needed similar support.
• School Action Plus The child is moved on to this next stage if progress is still insufficient and the school feels the need to call on outside agencies for further advice and support.

The final two stages of Statutory Assessment and Statementing remained as before.

Developments between 2002 and 2010

Although there was no major review of the SEN Framework between the Warnock Report and the build-up to the Children and Families Act 2014, there were many developments affecting children and young people with special needs and those who support them.

In 2003, Cathy Ashton (now Baroness Ashton), who was the Minister for SEN at the time, established a special schools working group (see The Report of the Special Schools Working Group 2003) to consider their future role. This fed into the Labour government’s Removing Barriers to Achievement: The Government’s Strategy for SEN (DfES, 2004). It suggested that special schools might educate fewer children, as teachers in mainstream schools became more used to educating pupils with a wider range of needs. Yet, when Andrew Adonis (Lord Adonis), who, by then, was Minister for SEN, was asked by the Education and Skills Committee a couple of years later (see Special Educational Needs, Vol 3 2005/ 06) whether this was still the case, he replied that the government wanted to support having ‘a flexible range of provision’ and would be content for special school places to remain at their current level. Subsequently, the Department produced Planning and Developing Special Educational Provision: A Guide for Local Authorities and Other Proposers (DCSF, 2007) setting out what a continuum of provision should cover.

Although there were no major changes to the overall framework, the significance of the role of SENCOs was increasingly recognised, first by legislation in 2008 requiring them to be qualified teachers and secondly, by introducing a mandatory qualification for them.

Towards the end of the Labour government’s 10 years in office, the profile of SEN gathered momentum and a series of reports were issued into different types and aspects of SEN. Significant among these, in terms of their influence on the coming changes, were the Lamb Inquiry: Special Educational Needs and Parental Confidence (DCSF, 2009) and Ofsted’s The Special Educational Needs and Disability Review: A Statement is not Enough (Ofsted, 2010).

In the foreword to Brian Lamb’s Inquiry, he said that, in gathering the views of parents, he had ‘met some of the happiest parents in the country and some of the angriest’. He summed up the four areas where change was most needed as:

1. Putting outcomes for children at the heart of the system
2. Giving parents a stronger voice
3. Focusing on children’s needs and not waiting for them to fail before providing the help they need
4. Strengthening the voice of children.

All these comments are reflected in the changes to the SEN Framework.

The Ofsted Review 2010 criticised schools for the over-identification of SEND. Whether or not it is a coincidence or partly as a result of Ofsted’s comments, the number of pupils with special needs has dropped since then (see Chapter 5 of this book for a fuller explanation). The review also said that: ‘… no one model – such as special schools, full inclusion in mainstream settings, or specialist units co-located with mainstream settings – worked better than any other’ (Executive summary, Ofsted, 2010: 7). This is borne out by the case studies in this book, which show effective practice across a range of very different settings.

Key point: SENCOs’ qualifications

• 2008 Legislation was introduced stating that anyone taking on the role of SENCO must be a qualified teacher.
• 2009 From this date, it became law for every new SENCO to gain the Masters-level National Award for SEN Co-ordination within 3 years ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Publisher Note
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• About the Authors
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations and Acronyms
• How to Use this Book
• Introduction
• Part One Policy
• 1 How the SEN Framework changed
• 2 The implications of the Children and Families Act (2014)
• 3 The SEND Code of Practice: 0–25 years
• Part Two Provision
• 4 Newer patterns of provision for pupils with SEN
• 5 Local authorities working with schools to increase SEN provision
• 6 Provision across the services and up to 25 years
• Part Three Practice
• 7 Meeting SEN in mainstream provision
• 8 Meeting SEN in specialist and alternative provision
• 9 Developing the workforce
• Conclusions
• References
• Index