Last week, members of the NNPCF steering group and management team met with officials from the Department for Education working on the Schools White Paper.

The DfE team covered the main tenants of the Bill outlined here Schools Bill: policy statements – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Key amongst these are the ambitions laid out in the Bill and the four strategies that underpin the legislation focussed on teaching, standards, targeted support and changes to the schools’ system.

The NNPCF are very concerned about the headline provisions in the bill around attainment, attendance and behaviour. When crude and simplistic approaches are taken, these are areas that can challenge children and young people with SEND. The overarching messages surrounding the Schools’ Bill are very troubling for our membership.

However, within the detailed provisions, there are many measures that we welcome and have been asking for over many years such as promoting an enriched curriculum and access to specialist support. But these more positive messages have been lost in the detail. The headlines around attainment, attendance and behaviour are dominating the agenda and we believe will come to overshadow the implementation of the Bill unless corrected.

The headlines from the Schools’ Bill are very concerning

The NNPCF expressed significant concerns to the DfE on some of the messages being promoted about the proposals, most notably:

Attainment

The White Paper lays out ambitions for attainment at key stage 2 (90% of learners to reach the expected standard in English and Maths) and key stage 4 (a rise in the average GSCE grade for English and Maths from 4.5 to 5). The NNPCF have several concerns with this approach

There is a danger that these “ambitions” for the whole system very rapidly become “targets” or “benchmarks” for schools, multi-academy trusts and local authorities. The DfE team took great lengths to emphasise that individual schools, trusts or local authorities will not be held to account for reaching these targets and Ofsted have confirmed that this will not form a part of their inspections. However, the NNPCF believes that these will become de facto measures of success and further incentivise schools to be less inclusive.
The focus on academic attainment devalues the more holistic success of many children and young people with SEND. We urged the DfE to look to broader, more individual measures of progress beyond grades.

Behaviour and Attendance

The legislation calls for a “relentless focus on behaviour and attendance”. Again, this poses significant risks for the SEND community:

This fails to take into account the underlying causes of behavioural concerns and lower attendance for children and young people with SEND. Unmet needs, blanket policies and emotionally or anxiety based issues are increasing in the SEND community and taking a harder line on behaviour and attendance will entrench existing concerns and cause further issues. Please see our recent post in response to the Attendance Audit by the Children’s Commissioner Children’s Commissioner’s Attendance Audit – National Network of Parent Carer Forums C.I.C (nnpcf.org.uk)

The regulatory system

The schools Bill proposes changes to the regulatory system for multi-academy trusts – namely a shake-up of the regional schools’ commissioners into new regional Educational Directorates with increased powers and the rationalisation of schools regulation into a single common rule book for academies.

However, there remains much ambiguity between the role and accountability of individual schools, multi-academy trusts, regional DfE directorates and local authorities. This lack of clarity carries significant risks for the most vulnerable children including those with SEND who may fall through the cracks (as many do now). You can find more on our concerns here The SEND Green Paper: NNPCF briefing – National Network of Parent Carer Forums C.I.C

However, there are some more positive details that we welcome

Most importantly, a strong multi-academy trust is defined as one that provides “high quality and inclusive education.” From the outset, we are pleased that there is a recognition that goods schools are inclusive schools.
The Bill contains measures for a diverse and enriched curriculum which will benefit many children with SEND in a way that a narrow academically based curriculum limits them.
Provisions on mental health and pastoral support are included which are so important to enable many children with SEND to flourish.
There are specific requirements on targeted support that is holistic covering academic, pastoral and specialist interventions (or a combination) where needed
Increased powers for a local authority to admit a pupil to a specific school
Greater controls on cases where pupils are moved between schools

The DfE will be launching a review into the new regulatory system proposed and a consultation into the new statutory pupil movement framework. The DfE agreed to engage with the NNPCF on both these activities.

Initial NNPCF response to the Schools White Paper

Yesterday saw the publication of the Schools’ White Paper, Opportunity for All (Opportunity for all – Strong schools with great teachers for your child (publishing.service.gov.uk)). This will form the basis of new legislation for schools and part of a package of reforms along with the SEND review.

This paper outlines our initial response to the contents of the document. Many of the key proposals in the White Paper have been discussed in the mainstream media, we will not focus on these broader proposals here, rather we will focus on those elements that are most relevant the children and young people with SEND.

Some key points include:

We are pleased that a strong multi-academy trust is defined one that provides a “high quality and inclusive education.” The review, regulation and enforcement of this will be key.
The target for 90% of children to meet targets for reading, writing and maths could be a very strong incentive for schools to focus on getting SEND provision right – if approximately 15% of children have SEND, it will be impossible to reach this target without strong SEND focus. However, we do have strong concerns about unintended consequences of this:
- because this is across the whole system and will not apply to individual schools or trusts there may be incentives for individual schools to schools to off roll or discourage SEND pupils from attending. The accountability, inspection and regulatory framework will need to be strong to counter this.
- a purely academic measure of success and focus on tests may be harmful to the mental health and well being of many pupils – we would like to see wider definitions of what success looks like for pupils.
The “Parent Pledge” may offer additional rights to parent-carers of children on SEN support to get support more quickly. However, the paper is silent on a more diverse range of support such as therapy services.
Likewise, the emphasis on targeted support is very welcome – however, the focus remains very strongly on tutoring – we would like to see more about the other non-academic support (e.g. speech and language or occupational therapy) that many SEND children need.
We have repeatedly called for greater clarity in the accountability of mainstream schools and in particular academies when it comes to SEND (see our post on our discussions with Baroness Barran NNPCF Steering Group meet with Minister on Schools White Paper – National Network of Parent Carer Forums C.I.C.). The White Paper goes some way towards tidying up the current confused accountability in the schools system. However, the responsibilities for ensuring that schools and trusts meet the needs of SEND children remains unclear – it is vital that the role of DfE Regional Directors and Local Authorities are clarified. At the moment, SEND children risk falling through the gaps again.
There remains a strong focus on behaviour and attendance throughout the paper – if implemented crudely, this may again prove a disincentive to inclusive schools. We would like to see more said about a requirement on schools to meet children’s needs promptly and an understanding that much “bad behaviour” results from unmet needs.
There is no mention of SEND in the remit for the new curriculum body that is proposed – the relationship between this and the minimum standards for SEND proposed in the SEND Green Paper requires greater clarity.
Finally, there are several welcome proposals for the SEND community such as the additional training of SENCos, the mention of school mental health teams, the continued focus of Ofsted on off-rolling and the steer towards a broad curriculum featuring sports, music and culture.

We will be working with the Department for Education as these proposals are further developed and we will be organising events for parent carer forums to gather your views over the coming weeks.