5 July 2024 weekly update

Dear Colleagues,

I am writing this on Thursday afternoon. so by the time you read this we will have the results of today’s General Election, but two things are for sure, whoever wins there’s not going to be a financial cavalry coming over the hill any time soon and the complexity of our respective roles will continue. There has been such a disappointing paucity of debate about children and young people in the pre-election period, I’ll be awaiting education policy announcements with particular interest.

Today’s introduction to the bulletin is focused on good SEN news, but I’ll take the occasion to remind you and your staff and parents and carers to please respond to the Special Schools Review consultation which is live until the end of the month.  In the words of Albert Einstein "The true definition of madness is repeating the same action over and over, hoping for a different result." Many of you have raised very legitimate concerns with me about the current system - this is your opportunity to formally have your views recorded, endorse the change programme and get a different result.

Some data about statutory functions

When SEN moved to join the Education Division in April 2023, there were significant backlogs in three key areas - children and young people for whom Assessment had been agreed (waiting for an Assessment); those awaiting the issuing of an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP); and completion of the LA aspect of Annual Reviews. Rather than playing the system to improve our performance against Key Performance Indicators by prioritising new cases, we decided the right thing to do was to give attention to children and young people that were ‘in the system’ already, where Assessment or Issuing of an EHCP had been agreed but they were stuck in a backlog. As a consequence, it has taken some time for improvements to be seen against the published KPIs, though this is beginning to change.

In September 2023, 1,080 children and young people were identified as having waited over 100 weeks in the system, all of whom have now had their EHCP issued. The KCC teams reached the targets of:

• zero cases over 100 weeks by the end of March 2024
• zero cases over 90 weeks by the end of April
• zero cases over 52 weeks by the end of May
• zero cases over 40 weeks by the end of June.

The teams are on target for no child or young person waiting over 30 weeks by the end of September 2024. As we clear the backlogs, KCC’s percentage of plans completed within the statutory 20 week deadline is gradually improving as we can devote more staff capacity to this, but the improvement is sustainable and the percentage meeting the statutory deadline will continue to increase in the new academic year. To provide comparative information, the National Average in 2023 was 50.7% completion within 20 weeks and the five lowest performing LAs nationally completed 3.8%, 4%, 4.5%, 7.3% and 9% of EHCPs by the deadline.

Percentage of plans completed within 20 weeks:

To give a sense of the scale of the work, KCC currently has 20,147 children and young people with an EHCP which means that the workforce had to significantly improve productivity to make inroads into the backlogs as well as managing incoming requests, in order to improve performance. As can be seen here, the number of Assessments being completed monthly has increased considerably. The Assessment and Placement teams are currently consistently issuing between 250 to 320 plans per month. This can fluctuate depending on school holidays and outside agency responses, however this level of output has been consistent since January 2024 and will remain above 250 monthly going forward.

Number of assessments completed over the last 12 months:

With regard to processing of Annual Reviews, in July 2023 63.7% of Annual Reviews were overdue, that was 12,297. This has reduced to 39.5% or 7,949 by the end of June 2024. So, as we ‘clear the decks’ of historic work we are expecting tangible improvements on the ground during the next academic year.

Impact of our partnership with the Autism Education Trust

You’ll know we are half way through our three year partnership with the AET, a project which is being rigorously evaluated. A big thank you to those of you that have encouraged parents to participate in the online evaluation activities. We have had the first feedback from that and it’s really good news. Of the 132 parents of autistic children that have participated so far, over 70% have said their child is happy in a Kent school, compared to a national average of 20 to 25%.

Positive feedback

We are getting positive feedback through a wide variety of routes, so here is a selection:

• Evaluation quote from SENCO forum:
  • “Very informative and wonderful to see everyone working together across the county.”
• Evaluations from SEND continuum of practice and provision:
  • “Agree with the principles underpinning the Continuum and the values and vision. Can’t believe it has taken Kent this long to be using this principle.”
  • “Open conversations that are honest and transparent will ensure better spending of money.”
  • “Thirsty for more!”
  • “The ability of school staff to understand what other schools are facing is really positive.”
• Feedback about members of SEN staff:
  • “x school were absolutely full of praise for you and the work you have done as their case worker. I believe there have been a number of challenging cases and some instances of incorrect and outdated paperwork etc. which required a lot of time to rectify. You worked tirelessly to get things right for the children and developed a very good working relationship with the school.”
  • “Many thanks for this information as this is extremely helpful to me, my son’s welfare and learning at school.”
  • “Many thanks for contacting me…I have appreciated the help and kindness today.”

And finally…

Climate is currently pretty high up the list of hot topics and so I’d thought these interactive maps created by researchers from UCL and Birkbeck to show climate change in each UK constituency would be of interest. Whilst almost every constituency will have less summer rainfall, there is an expected 3.4% increase in East Thanet, Kent!

Have a great weekend

Best wishes

Christine McInnes
Director of Education and SEN