AP and SEND vision
The big topic of conversation in my part of the sector this week was the release of the SEND and AP improvement plan. Depending on who I spoke too, the Right Support, Right Place, Right Time document was either ambitious and timely or sorely lacking and disappointingly late / never going to happen.
For my part, I think there is much to be applauded in the plan and I am grateful that AP is taking its appropriate place in education policy making. For too long, it has been the ‘Cinderella’ service, and its staff and pupils treated accordingly.
But you can make your own mind up about the plan and its implications. I found the summary briefing by Stone King LLP partner and education lead, Roger Inman particularly useful. It explores how the plan will affect the key legal entitlements which govern how school and AP institutions operate within the SEND/AP system, and it does it in a politically neutral way. A much-needed contribution in our divided times.
Schools built on love
Chris Dyson, deputy CEO of The Create Partnership Trust, is brave enough to use the L word in his book title, A school built on love. He repeats it regularly in this interview with Anthony Judge and Kay Batkin for the ‘Well Schools’ podcast by the Youth Sport Trust.
As the former headteacher of Parklands Primary School in Leeds, Dyson describes how he led the transformation of that school with genuine enthusiasm about its children and community. I was particularly engaged by his description of removing “the padded room” and introducing music to the corridors.
Lots of headteachers have turned schools around, but Dyson is perhaps unique in his singular focus on love and making school a fun place to be. It’s certainly a change from all the talk of sacking staff, excluding ‘troublemakers’ and implementing strict rules. Parklands has only permanently excluded one child in nine years, and it regularly takes in children that other schools don’t want.
I absolutely love this approach and found it a refreshing and relevant listen at a time when we are in real danger of exclusively adopting a silence-in-the-corridors, zero-tolerance culture to school improvement. Current attendance rates and TikTok protests suggest the model is alienating a large number of children. Perhaps we should look to other types of love than the tough kind.
Selective hearing
Which brings me to the latest session of the education select committee and its hearing on persistent absence from school. Children’s commissioner, Rachel De Souza gave evidence to the inquiry that while Covid “had an impact” on attendance, of 1.6 million children persistently absent in the autumn and spring terms of 2021-22, 818,000 were not off because of illness.
The committee also heard about the various issues facing schools in improving attendance. These include wealthier parents who are not put off from booking term-time holidays by fines, the use of B codes to hide poor attendance, and the large and seemingly increasing number of pupils who are going missing from the system.
Sadly, what I hear a lot in my conversations but has not yet been said to the committee is that there is a problem with the school system in its entirety. It seems to come as a genuine surprise to many of its members that such large numbers of pupils are continuing to fail, and worse that the failure appears to be growing. It’s not just absence rates; increasing numbers of pupils disappearing from the system and record exclusion rates indicate a deep malaise.
A leaf could be taken from the kind of vision set out in the SEND and AP improvement plan in being more ambitious for the system, and Labour at least seem attuned to that. Bridget Phillipson’s proposal to reform the current high-stakes accountability system shows some understanding that if it was fit for purpose, some of these issues might not be manifesting.
Perhaps I’m being radical here, but couldn’t we build an education system around the needs of our pupils? Wouldn’t that be a system built on love?
Your thoughts