On Tuesday, NNPCF Co-Chair Mrunal Sisodia attended the launch of the Ofsted Annual Report for 2020-21.
The report reviews the work of Ofsted over a year of very heavy Covid disruption in schools and other children’s services. SEND features very heavily in the report and Ofsted has highlighted many of the same points that have been raised by the NNPCF over the last 18 months. These include:
· Challenges for children and young people (CYP) with SEND accessing school
· Differentiation and diversity of the curriculum
· Difficulties in accessing respite services e.g. Holiday schemes for SEND that were not run
· Barriers to accessing multi-agency services
· Fears of parents of clinically vulnerable CYP about covid itself
However, it is also clear that not all of the issues in the current system can be laid at the door of the pandemic and that many CYP with both EHCPs and SEN support were being failed by the system before the pandemic.
These points are entirely consistent with the messages that the NNPCF has been giving national and local government
The report also looks forward to the SEND review and outlines some key points that Ofsted would like to see from the review. Again, these are consistent with the NNPCF input into the review.
At the reception, Mrunal spoke with the chief inspector Amanda Spielman, the Director of Education (Chris Russell), the Director Social Care (Yvette Stanley) and the new lead for the local area inspection framework (Lee Owsten). The NNPCF already works closely with Yvette and both Chris and Lee agreed to meet and work with the NNPCF over the coming weeks and months. In particular, we will be feeding back on the implementation of the 2019 Education Inspection Framework and, of course, the development of the new local area inspection framework.
You can find a copy of the Ofsted report here: Ofsted Annual Report 2020/21: education, children’s services and skills – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)