Your name's not down, you're not coming in!
Last week I wrote about waiting to hear about an EHCP assessment application. I’m happy to share the family has a ‘Yes’ to Assess – a great way to start the New Year, but what if making an application in the first place is the stumbling block?
Being the parent of child with difficulties at school is tough. It’s tougher than tough, it’s plain hard at times. Being a teacher of a child with difficulties is equally tough, and in today’s economic and educational landscape it’s tougher than it has been for years.
Parents whose child is struggling at school often struggle to get the right support, and this often results in a confrontation with the school, which is blamed for everything that goes wrong. This is such a shame, because at the heart of it, most teachers I’ve met, regardless of how they’ve shown up, are genuinely trying to help children learn. Education budgets are being slashed, support is being withdrawn, and the school staff are increasingly entrenched in mires of paperwork to get what little additional funding they are able to secure.
Sometimes, their environment is just not setup to help them help you to help your child.
A great example is requests for an Educational Health and Care Plan (EHCP) assessment. Teachers, SENCos and Head Teachers often appear to be acting like a guardian between the parent and the Local Authority, telling you, effectively, “your name’s not down, you’re not coming in”. It feels like they are physically body blocking your attempts to secure support for your child
The number of reasons they list to justify this position is incredible. The request will be refused because:
“your child is making progress”
“there are other children in the school who are far worse”
“your child doesn’t meet the criteria from the Local Authority”
“we haven’t spent £6,000 on additional support”
“they aren’t sufficiently far behind”
“they don’t have a diagnosis”
“there’s no money”
and so it continues.
The shame of it is that it isn’t the function of a school to make this decision. It is for Local Authorities to make the decision as to whether or not to conduct an EHCP assessment. By refusing to submit a request, they are acting like a gatekeeper – which is exactly how they have been conditioned by many Local Authorities.
Local Authorities are increasingly refusing to undertake an assessment if the school has not “taken relevant and purposeful action to identify, assess and meet the special educational needs of the child.”
Perhaps when parents hear ‘you won’t get an EHCP’ what the school is really saying is ‘we’ve not done our jobs properly, so please don’t show us up.’
Rather than ending up in a stalemate, or worse, if parents can help schools to demonstrate they have taken relevant and purposeful action, the entire process could be more collaborative and supportive and less adversarial.
