Poor-quality education, health and care plans (EHCPs) include “copy and paste” elements and some even have the wrong child’s name on, Schools Week has found.
Analysis by experts suggests many plans also break the law over requirements that they provide specific and quantifiable support for children with additional needs – helping councils shirk their legal duty to fully fund provision.
The SEND code of practice states provision “must be detailed and specific and should normally be quantified, for example, in terms of the type, hours and frequency of support and level of expertise”.
But analysis by Schools Week of SEND area inspection reports show Ofsted repeatedly flags poor quality of plans, even in the few areas judged to be “positive”.
Ofsted: plans often ‘poor quality’
A December inspection in Lancashire found plans were “often of a poor quality”.
A July inspection in Hertfordshire added plans lacked “precision and clarity”. Errors pointed out by parents during drafts also made it into final plans.
Across the 10 EHCPs obtained from Milton Keynes, the same phrase asking SENCos to “cascade the identified strategies and provision to all class teachers and support staff at the start of each half term” appeared 40 times.
The whole system is crying out for a review and fresh start
In one EHCP from Sunderland, the same paragraphs were listed in the “provision required” section of the report for all four “desired outcomes”.
“Examples like this suggest there isn’t always thought about how provision will be enacted in reality by school staff or if it will have a meaningful impact for the pupil,” Anne Heavey said.
EHCPs are written by councils, but based on advice from professionals involved with the child, including educational psychologists who must assess pupils.
Phil Humphreys, director of education at Lift Schools, said their own analysis shows “in the most extreme cases, plans are just copied and pasted from other children, and even have name of the child wrong as a result”.
David Collingwood, president of the Association of Educational Psychologists, said a shortage of EPs and backlogs in assessments are a “massive problem”, adding there is “always pressure to write advice quicker”.
But Humphreys added: “All of this amounts to a picture of a system that is badly broken and which all too frequently fails to deliver what it is intended to do.
“The whole system is crying out for a review and fresh start.”
Vagueness: ‘cock-up or conspiracy?’
Consultants from Premier Advisory Group (PAG) have reviewed nearly 400 EHCPs across 20 schools and trusts. They found more than 90 per cent did not comply with the SEND code of practice, with many being too vague.
A PAG report for one trust, which looked at about 140 EHCPs, found just five where more than half of the support listed was “quantifiable”. Thirteen (9 per cent) had no quantifiable support listed at all.
Vapid EHCP content suits the local authority
For instance, one report said: “She will require 1:1 or small group support to enable her to access and complete learning activities.”
Matt Keer, a SEND expert who writes for specialist website Special Needs Jungle, said: “We give parents a list of weasel words and phrases to look out for (“access to”, “opportunities for”, “as required”).
Read the rest of our special, five-part investigation:
Investigation: How EHCPs are failing our most vulnerable children
Fidget spinners and learning styles: EHCPs’ interventions exposed
Schools pick up the pieces of absent health and social care providers
Feature: The case for a SEND evidence ‘custodian’
Comment: SEND provision is the last bastion of unevidenced practice
“While vapid EHCP content suits the local authority, it often sets families up for conflict with schools.”
Gary Aubin, a SEND expert, said plans needed an “element of schools being able to make it work in their context”.
“But where trust has eroded within our SEND system, stakeholders start believing – sometimes correctly – that ‘if it isn’t written down in detail, it either won’t happen or won’t be funded’.”
Andre Imich, DfE’s former SEND professional adviser, also said some schools “want quite a bit of flexibility to be able to deal with changing needs”.
He added too much specificity “may tie people down and may not always be the best thing for a child” – and there is not “universal agreement on what a good plan looks like”.
But the PAG report concluded the lack of detail in the 140 EHCPs it analysed meant it was not possible to “fully understand the cost of support needed”. Forty per cent of plans also had no funding stated.
Tom Legge, PAG’s managing director, said the poor quality of EHCPs “begs the question as to whether this is cock-up or conspiracy”, given they were “more often than not accompanied by funding that, even on the most cursory analysis, is insufficient to meet need”.
Schools left to pick up funding gaps
When schools were consulted on the actual cost of EHCP provision, PAG found widespread underfunding from councils.
Analysis of one trust’s EHCPs found its mainstream schools had a gap in funding of between £10,000 to £30,000 per school.
For the special schools in the trust, the funding gap across fewer than 50 EHCPs amounted to nearly £3 million.
One particular issue, according to the reports, is the quantity of 1:1 support mandated.
PAG analysis of EHCPs across mainstream schools at one trust found while few had quantifiable support, 80 per cent of it was 1:1.
Another of its reports stated a trust, which ran classes of one qualified teacher and two teaching assistants per eight pupils, would need an extra TA per class to provide the level of 1:1 support mandated. This would cost £750,000 extra per year across just two schools.
One trust leader told Schools Week it got £19,000 top-up funding for a child with complex needs. However, the child required full-time 1:1 support, which cost £27,000.
This also did not include other mandated interventions, such as at least 40 hours a year of speech therapy.
Sir Jon Coles, CEO of United Learning trust which has analysed its schools’ EHCPs, said: “Sometimes, what is proposed seems designed to insulate a child from access to excellent teaching”.
“In some examples, 6 or 7 hours of 1-1 activities are required per week, with no apparent assessment of the costs or benefits of a child being out of class for over a day each week.”
“I am seriously concerned that many billions of pounds are being spent on a system which claims to be bespoke to individual children, but in reality is far from that, and is likely to be having limited benefit to a lot of children – and perhaps no or negative impact on considerable numbers.”
Director and barrister Dean Hulse, from HY Education solicitors, which has an EHCP benchmarking tool, said the 2014 Children and Families Act created a “hard edged legal duty” for councils to ensure support in section F is provided.
“Yet day in, day out, schools are being asked to deliver this provision without adequate funding.”
Keer added, that given a council’s legal responsibility, a school or family “should be in a powerful position to rectify things”.
Legge said schools’ “desperation” at the funding situation was “driving an increased number to litigate against their home councils – often as a last resort to draw attention to their plight”.
A standardised EHCP template is being trialled with some councils under reforms introduced by the Conservative government, but plans are long delayed.
Your thoughts