Statements of SEN

Schools and LEAs have always been recommended to adopt a ‘graduated approach’ to SEN. There were originally five stages of the Code of Practice - stages 1 to 3 being school based (which have now been replaced by ‘School Action’ and ‘School Action Plus’ for schools or ‘Early Years Action’ and ‘Early Years Action Plus’ for early years settings).

Therefore the vast majority of children have their needs met in mainstream schools but if the child's needs are still unable to be met without extra support, then the LEA is legally required to consider the need for, and, if appropriate, must conduct a multi-disciplinary 'Statutory Assessment' of the child’s needs.

After this, if necessary, the LEA must make, maintain and monitor a Statement of SEN which will set out a description of the child's SEN, the Special Educational Provision required to meet the child's needs and, after consideration of the child's Parents' preference, will name a School that it believes will be able to meet the child's needs which may also be the Parents' preferred school as long as it would not amount to an inefficient use of the LEA's resources or be considered as 'unreasonable public expenditure'.

STATEMENTS OF SEN

Historically, the debate around Statements has always seemed to overshadow the debate on Special Needs. Emotions run high about this issue and there is a great deal of mistrust between Parents and Schools/LEAs, Schools and LEAs and LEAs and Educational Organisations.

Parents feel that they have to fight LEAs (and sometimes Schools) to get a Statement. Schools feel that LEAs do not support them properly (both financially and otherwise) or that parents are being unreasonable in their expectations. Voluntary organisations feel that LEAs are overly beaurocratic and resource driven and avoid doing what is right for a child in the first place and rather waste time and money defending SENDIST Appeals and other High Court actions. LEAs obviously view all the other parties as not truly understanding the dilemma that they find themselves in with limited resources yet extensive statutory duties to meet.

Broadly speaking, we understand from the Audit Commission’s report that it is estimated that a Statement costs at least £2500 to produce and that authorities in England and Wales are spending upwards of £85m annually on statutory assessments and writing statements (and this does not include the costs of making the provision or defending SENDIST Appeals or other legal actions).

Moreover, specialist staff such as Educational Psychologists or Speech & Language Therapists are in short supply nationally but still have to devote a significant proportion of their time to this process rather than providing direct input.

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