Local area SEND inspections – are you ready?

New duties regarding provision for children and young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) came into force in September 2014. From May 2016, Ofsted has been carrying out local area inspections to assess how well a local area carries out its SEND duties. How well does your provision shape up? How about your young people with high levels of need?

In my equality news update in November 2015, I alerted people that Ofsted would be carrying out local area inspections from May 2016. You can find out more information about these inspections in my November update, which you can read here

Ofsted have now published their framework and their handbook for these local area inspections.

You can download the framework here

You can download the handbook here

Although these inspections are designed to hold local areas to account, they are also to assist local areas in improving and developing their processes and support systems to become more effective and deliver better outcomes for children and young people.

Ofsted have also published a report that examines how well further education and skills provision meets the needs and interests of young people with high levels of need. Last year there were over 22,000 young people with high needs attending FE providers in England. The report also assesses the extent to which SEND duties were being met. The report, Moving Forward? finds that too many young people with learning difficulties and/or disabilities are poorly prepared for adult life.

A number of concerns are highlighted in the report, including:

• nearly half of the providers visited not having adequate strategies, experience or expertise to support their learners with learning difficulties or disabilities
• specialist, impartial careers guidance found to be generally weak, with 16 of the 20 local authority websites reviewed failing to provide sufficiently detailed information
• too many learners on programmes that do not lead to further learning, employment or independent/supported living
• slow progress by high needs learners in English and mathematics
• poor recording of learners’ progress, meaning many are not achieving their full potential

You can download the report Moving Forward? here