Monitoring inspections for areas deemed to have ‘widespread’ failures in their SEND provision will restart this term, a senior Ofsted official has said.
Ofsted announced a review into SEND area inspections last year, with monitoring inspections – revisits within 18 months to areas found to have systemic issues – paused.
But speaking at the education committee today, SEND and alternative provision inspector Adam Sproston said monitoring inspections will resume in the summer term.
Ofsted told Schools Week it also plans to publish the outcome of its review “soon”.
The hearing, part of the committee’s SEND solutions inquiry, also heard calls for the local government ombudsman to investigation school exclusions and that new schools bill powers for councils over admissions “do not address” wider inclusion issues.
1. SEND monitoring inspections to restart this term
Ofsted is currently reviewing the area SEND inspections, which has seen monitoring inspections – for areas where widespread failings are found – suspended.
But Sproston said monitoring visits will be restarting in the summer term. He said they will help “build a clearer sense of the impact our work has had”.
He added the inspectorate will also “clarify its approach” to these revisits so they are “clearer for the sector about what they will entail”.
Just a quarter of councils inspected under the new area SEND inspection framework, introduced in 2023, were found to deliver “positive experiences and outcomes” for children.
A third were found to have ‘widespread’ failings – the bottom rating – while half were rated as ‘inconsistent’, the middle rating, Sproston said. He said 64 of the 153 councils have had a full SEND inspection since 2023.
Common issues found were struggles with recruitment and retention of specialist staff, lack of co-ordination between health and social partners and schools, rising demand for support and long wait times for wider services.
Lucy Harte, deputy director of multi-agency operations at the Care Quality Commission, which runs the inspections alongside Ofsted, said restarted monitoring visits will “give us more information about the impact of inspection and the impact of [subsequent] interventions” from councils or the government.
2. Ofsted: We DO consider data on council ‘law-breaking’
Ofsted and the CQC were challenged over a concern that wider data showing poor practice in councils is not picked up during inspections.
More than nine in ten legal cases in both SEND tribunals and those overseen by ombudsman go against councils.
But Georgina Downard, senior solicitor at the Independent Provider of Special Education Advice (IPSEA), said parents do not feel “heard or their voices valued when breaking the law doesn’t appear in reports”.
Sproston said inspectors do consider such data, but it is used “as a starting point on inspection. We don’t check compliance with every legal duty, but are evaluating the experiences and outcomes of children with SEND.”
Harte added the data also is where inspectors “develop lines of enquiry” from. She said reports “try to bring to life more than the data point”.
3. Ombudsman: ‘We need power to investigate school exclusions’
Sharon Chappell, assistant ombudsman at the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO), repeated calls for her organisation to be given powers to investigate practices in schools like attendance and exclusions.
She told MPs: “We often see evidence of things going wrong – part-time timetables, off rolling, unofficial exclusions, failure to provide what is in an EHCP [education, health and care plans] – but we can’t hold schools to account.”
She said these practices “drive parents” to request EHCPs and “fight for plans as an added extra protection”.
The ombudsman can currently investigate cases of councils not complying with their duties relating to EHCPs.
But giving extra powers to the ombudsman to investigate practice in schools would provide “robust accountability” for the sector and help reduce the number of parents who “feel like they have to go down that route”, she said.
“It’s an urgent issue… we would like to see true accountability across the whole education spectrum.”
4. Schools bill plans ‘don’t address accountability concerns’
Labour’s schools bill proposes new duties that will give councils more influence over admissions at academies, which are their own admission authorities.
A new duty would force schools and councils to co-operate on admissions, with local authorities also able to direct academies to admit a child and appeal to the schools adjudicator over academies’ admission numbers.
But Downard said extending these powers alone are “not likely to remove to take away exclusionary practices” employed by some schools.
Chappell added while they “may help”, the plans also do not “address our concerns over a lack of accountability on SEND admissions more generally”.
“If an academy needs to be directed to take a child, there is an indication about the culture in that environment,” she added, pointing out parents looking to escalate a complaint after it has been dealt with by an academy trust must go to the secretary of state.
“That’s a big leap to make,” she said, adding a more “effective” system would be “underpinned by a fair, simple and independent accountability structure”.
If a parent said a school hasn’t removed barriers for their child, they’ve “got nowhere to go with that,” she added. “Make sure complaint route that is easy, accessible and independent.”
Downard added that the results of complaints to the Department for Education are not published, with no recommendations issued, whereas the ombudsman does.
5. Fining councils over failures would drive ‘perverse behaviours’
The ombudsman can demand councils pay a ‘financial remedy’ for SEND failures. However, this is often a small amount and normally cheaper than councils actually providing the support in the first place.
“We have been accused of letting councils off lightly,” Chappell said. “But our aim is to try improve systems on a wider basis for all… We’re not punitive.”
She said early signs from a study with Manchester University show councils take the ombudsman findings – which are published – “very seriously”.
“Even in a system under significant challenge, it can give extra leverage when additional resources are needed in a particular area,” she added.
She questioned whether increasing financial penalties would drive improvement, adding it “could actually result in perverse behaviours to try and avoid those penalties. Recommendations around service change we feel are more effective.”
6. Extend tribunal powers to health and social care
Rising numbers of parents are taking councils to tribunals to overturn decisions relating to EHCPs, however powers do not extend to health and social care providers.
Downard said the providers could be classed as relevant parties to SEND tribunal appeals and directed to provide evidence for hearings.
This could lead to health bodies “actively resolving health issues in dispute [phases]” and act as a “deterrent to get health to the table even earlier on”, she said.
Downard also said, after positive feedback, the SEND tribunal was looking to run a three-week pilot to see if ‘judicial alternative dispute resolution’ (JADR) could be extended to a wider category of EHCP appeals.
JADR is a form of mediation that includes a judge speaking to both parties and providing feedback on the strength of their legal case, she said. This helps settle cases without the need for a hearing, which costs more and can take longer.
The Ministry of Justice could not be contacted for comment.
7. Any dilution of SEND child rights would be ‘a national shame’
Concluding, Downard told the committee that despite its issues – England’s legal framework, based on children with special needs “having a right to education that meets those needs, is something that we should be proud of”.
“Any approach or suggestion of diluting that would be a cause of significant national shame. Children with SEND should have just as much right to fulfil their potential as children that don’t,” she added.
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