Question 1: What key factors should be considered when developing national standards to ensure they deliver improved outcomes and experiences for children and young people with SEND and their families?

We oppose the proposal to produce new standards. The focus should be on ensuring that the existing Code of Practice is implemented effectively, including identifying and removing the systemic barriers to effective implementation. In the case of schools, this is largely due to the failure to ensure that they are adequately resourced and supported. There is a need to address issues such as capacity, workload and resources in mainstream provision.

There is a need to strengthen the requirements in respect of health and social care. In particular, there is a need to ensure that accountability mechanisms apply to health and social care and not just to education and the local authority as a default. There is a need to clarify when specialist health and social care should be provided and that this should be provided by health and social care services.

Question 2: How should we develop the proposal for new local SEND partnerships to oversee the effective development of local inclusion plans whilst avoiding placing unnecessary burdens or duplicating current partnerships?

It is unclear whether local SEND partnership will fulfil a distinct and separate role for other partnerships. There is a risk that it will increase bureaucratic burdens. There is a need to identify and address explicitly the potential workload burdens for schools and colleges associated with engaging in and contributing to partnerships.

Question 3: What factors would enable local authorities to successfully commission provision for low-incidence high-cost need, and further education, across local authority boundaries?

Funding should support the development of specialist high-cost provision across authority boundaries. There is a need to actively encourage and enable local authorities to work together in an area to establish provision and to challenge those that resist cross-authority working unreasonably.

Question 4: What components of the EHCP should we consider reviewing or amending as we move to a standardised and digitised version?

There is a need to redesign the EHCP processes to reduce the bureaucracy and burdens on staff in schools. This might include automating processes such as the identification of meeting times, requests for information and sharing of information.

It usually falls to individual schools to manage the EHCP process. This is unacceptable. It must be clear that local authorities, not school staff, should be responsible for writing the EHCP.

Question 5: How can parents and local authorities most effectively work together to produce a tailored list of placements that is appropriate for their child and gives parents confidence in the EHCP process?

We oppose the proposal to produce a tailored list of placements and believe that this will be used to control costs at the expense of ensuring that the provision meets the child’s needs.

Question 6: To what extent do you agree or disagree with our overall approach to strengthen redress, including through national standards and mandatory mediation?

We do not think that mandatory mediation is appropriate and are concerned that this will prevent some children and young people and their families from seeking redress. The issue is not about parents and carers making complaints, but the fact that their children are not receiving the support to which they are entitled.

Question 7: Do you consider the current remedies available to the SEND Tribunal for disabled children who have been discriminated against by schools effective in putting children and young people’s education back on track?

The Government and other relevant agencies have failed to investigate and tackle the root causes of discrimination.

The Government, Ofsted, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and the SEND Tribunal all have an important role to play in ensuring that the system operates fairly, that appropriate redress is available when discrimination occurs, and that lessons are learned from past failures across the system.

The Government should place greater emphasis on schools fulfilling their responsibilities in relation to the Equality Act. There should also be a greater focus on equalities matters across inspections.

Question 8: What steps should be taken to strengthen early years practice with regard to conducting the two-year-old progress check and integration with the Healthy Child Programme Review?

There is a need to ensure that information collected by services working with the youngest children is shared with other services and settings, including schools and early years education settings.

Question 9: To what extent do you agree or disagree that we should introduce a new mandatory SENCO NPQ to replace the NASENCO?

The proposal that the SENCO NPQ should be a senior leadership qualification is welcome because it recognises that the SENCO should be a senior leadership position. However, the Government must take measures to enable SENCOs to undertake the training, including providing grants/bursaries to cover the full costs of training and providing funding for paid cover while the SENCO is undertaking the training.

The Green Paper fails to respond to feedback from trainee teachers and early career teachers that their training is not preparing them to meet the needs of pupils with SEND.

The proposals fail to address the development needs of experienced teachers and the training and development needs of Teaching Assistants (TAs) and support staff.

Question 10: To what extent do you agree that we should strengthen the mandatory SENCO training requirement by requiring that headteachers must be satisfied that the SENCO is in the process of obtaining the relevant qualification when taking on the role?

The mandatory SENCO training requirements should be reworded so that the burden for demonstrating competence rests with the school rather than the individual teacher and to make clear that the headteacher is responsible for ensuring that the SENCO is able to undertake the required training and will be supported to do that training, including given time and funding for this purpose.

Question 11: To what extent do you agree or disagree that both specialist and mixed MATs (multi-academy trusts) should be allowed to co-exist in the fully trust-led future?

Accountability systems must be able to unpick how MATs function in respect of inclusive practice and specialist provision.

Academy providers must be properly and robustly regulated in terms of their admissions and exclusion practice.

MATs must be required to work in concert with other schools and children’s services providers locally to ensure that the needs of all children in the local areas are properly addressed.

Question 12: What more can be done by employers, providers and government to ensure that those young people with SEND can access, participate in and be supported to achieve an apprenticeship, including through access routes like traineeships?

There are particular issues with traineeships which fail to cater for the needs of young people with SEND. Action is needed to challenge employers to fulfil their responsibilities under equalities legislation.

Question 13: To what extent do you agree or disagree that this new vision for AP will result in improved outcomes for children and young people?

Limiting the focus of early intervention support to that provided by AP is likely to result in some children and young people with SEND not receiving appropriate early intervention support until their unmet needs manifest as a behaviour issue.

The failure to propose reforms that will enable mainstream schools to support more children and young people with SEND means that many more children with SEND are likely to be placed in AP, remain in AP and experience a revolving door where they move in and out of AP.

Question 14: What needs to be in place in order to distribute existing funding more effectively to AP schools to ensure they have the financial stability required to deliver our vision for more early intervention and re-integration?

Multi-year budgets must be properly costed and AP appropriately resourced. This must recognise the costs of employing and retaining qualified and experienced teachers, of training and developing teachers and support staff, and providing early intervention support in mainstream schools.

Question 15: To what extent do you agree or disagree that introducing a bespoke alternative provision performance framework, based on these five outcomes, will improve the quality of alternative provision?

The performance framework must recognise outcomes such as social and emotional, vocational and practical outcomes as well as academic outcomes. It should also include outcomes that cover the recruitment and retention of qualified teachers and staff in AP and the professional development and support provided to teachers and support staff.

Question 16: To what extent do you agree or disagree that a statutory framework for pupil movements will improve oversight and transparency of placements into and out of alternative provision?

This will depend on what information is included, the ease with which the information is provided and how the information is used to hold schools and providers to account.

Information requirements must not be burdensome and bureaucratic. Pupil movement data must be accurate. There is a need to monitor pupil movements by SEN and by protected characteristic under the Equality Act.

Question 17: What are the key metrics we should capture and use to measure local and national performance?

The data indicators need to be carefully selected and tested before they are introduced in order to ensure that there are no unintended consequences. Unions should be actively engaged in this process.

Question 18: How can we best develop a national framework for funding bands and tariffs to achieve our objectives and mitigate unintended consequences and risks?

Feedback from teachers and school leaders indicates that:

• local authorities and schools continue to disagree about banding decisions;

• some local authorities have very complex and burdensome systems of banding; and

• banding can encourage ‘fitting the child or young person into a box’.

There should be extensive engagement, consultation and testing with all key stakeholders, including mainstream and special schools, to ensure that bands do not lead to unintended consequences.

Question 19: How can the National SEND Delivery Board work most effectively with local partnerships to ensure the proposals are implemented successfully?

The National SEND Delivery Board must have thorough and effective oversight of the implementation of provision for SEND.

The Board must be able to identify whether provision for education, health and social care is implemented successfully and take action to address barriers to effective implementation. This includes taking action to address issues relating to the involvement of health and social care in an area.

Question 20: What will make the biggest difference to successful implementation of these proposals? What do you see as the barriers to and enablers of success?

The ambitions set out in the Green Paper will not be met unless the Government increases the spending envelope that was set out in the 2021 Spending Review.

The proposals fail to acknowledge the existing pressures on schools and colleges, including those relating to workload. The proposals will make even greater demands of schools.

Every teacher and school leader should have a continuing professional development (CPD) entitlement which must be adequately resourced, including ensuring that teachers have time within the working day to undertake training and development.

The Government must challenge providers who charge huge fees and should look into the feasibility of funding the highest cost provision directly.

Question 21: What support do local systems and delivery partners need to successfully transition and deliver the new national system?

Additional resources are needed. There are workload pressures associated with introducing reforms, including managing dual systems and staff training and familiarity.

The reforms must be implemented over a realistic period of time, including allowing sufficient time to review and respond to emerging issues.