Government ignoring SEND parents over SATS harm

This article was amended on Wednesday 21st January at 14:58 with the Department for Education’s response to our questions.

The government is ignoring parents over the harm that SATS exams are doing to children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

 

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SEND children abandoned

Back in November, 20 SEND groups dispatched a letter to Bridget Phillipson MP, Secretary of State for Education.

It stated that:

76% of our children fail SATs. Imagine what that actually means. Children who already face huge challenges at school spend their entire Year 6 convinced they are not clever enough. They feel they don’t belong. They try harder every day, but the odds are so stacked against them that the weight of it all eventually breaks them.

It went on to outline:

the devastating impact of SATs on their children: anxiety, stress, not wanting to go to school. All to be branded as a failure just before they move to secondary school.

Despite the government claiming they are listening to SEND parents, the group has only just received a reply – and not even from the Secretary of State herself. Instead, a civil servant responded.

According to an Instagram post, the letter was a copy-and-paste job, using the same words as the previous government and:

does not address any of the points raised in the letter, nor does it demonstrate any concern for SEND children or their families.

The majority of the letter provides a defence of the system which we’ve heard many times before – the words are identical to those used by the Conservative government when they were in power.

The response also suggested that children with SEND could be assessed using the Department for Education’s (DfE) engagement model. According to the government, this is:

an assessment tool to help schools support pupils who are working below the level of the national curriculum and not engaged in subject-specific study.

But, the group states that this is not relevant for most children with SEND.

When we asked the DfE for comment, they told us:

Parents, professionals and experts from across the country have taken part in extensive engagement on SEND, ensuring our forthcoming reforms are shaped by those who know the system best.

They are telling us the system needs to work better earlier; with children identified and supported sooner, teachers feeling confident rather than overwhelmed, and specialist expertise available when it is needed. SEND reform is about improving the quality, consistency and accessibility of support at every level of the system, so families do not have to fight to get help.

However, the campaign groups – made up of those same parents of SEND children – are asking for broader and more effective change. They want the government to make the education system fairer and more inclusive by scrapping SATS and other primary assessments. The DfE’s response to both the Canary and to the groups falls far short of the changes that are required. As such, the group noted:

For years we’ve been asking successive governments to listen and make real change to a damaging assessment system.

National conversation

In December, the government launched a national conversation on SEND. It claimed to be a new public engagement campaign, with the government:

acting on its commitment to put parents’ experiences at the heart of SEND reform.

However, the campaign has faced backlash from parents’ groups and campaigners, amid a series of government leaks and denials.

The Special Needs Jungle reported:

Launched with fanfare in late November, with the white paper still due to be published early this year, the Government would like us to believe this is a genuine exercise in “co-creation”. Rather than, say, a bad-faith attempt to look consultative while all the major decisions about reform have already been taken and covertly briefed to the press.

At the end of December, The Times revealed a “Whitehall source” had leaked information about children with SEND losing their right to support, except in the most severe cases.

It said:

Legal documents that guarantee extra support for children with special needs are to be restricted to those with the most severe and complex requirements.

Under the proposals, the legal rights granted to parents over their child’s support would instead be taken over by schools, which would deal with councils and the government directly.

Campaigners then warned that this could have catastrophic implications for children and families.

Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/ Sebastiandoe5