Children with Special Educational Needs

Frequently asked questions

Who decides whether to agree to a statutory assessment?

We have a Special Educational Needs Panel. One of the main responsibilities of the panel is to consider requests for a statutory assessment and to decide whether this is needed.

The Special Educational Needs Panel is made up of a range of educational professionals, all of whom have wide experience of working with children with special educational needs. The panel will include:

The local authority officer responsible for special educational needs and inclusion
The local authority officer responsible for managing the statutory assessment of special educational needs
A Head Teacher from Barking and Dagenham
An educational psychologist; and
An advisory teacher from the Education Inclusion Team|

How does the Special Educational Needs Panel decide to go ahead with a statutory assessment?

We have drawn up conditions (called criteria) for deciding whether to start a statutory assessment when we receive a request.

We have used guidance in 2 main documents to draw up the criteria.

The Code of Practice for Special Educational Needs 2001

This provides guidance for considering whether a statutory assessment is necessary. The main aim was to protect the interests of pupils with severe, complex and long-term learning disabilities.

The code of practice says that the local authority should consider:

Evidence of how the school has provided effective learning opportunities for the child
Evidence that shows the nature and extent of the child's difficulties
Evidence of actions that have already been taken by the school
Evidence of the child's progress; and
Evidence that while progress has been made, this has only been made possible by a high level of input that the school could not reasonably maintain from resources available for special educational needs

The code of practice for special educational needs was published at a time when local authorities provided extra resources to schools according to needs set out in statements of special educational needs. This is no longer the case in many local authorities, including Barking and Dagenham.

Joint criteria for statutory assessment from the London Special Educational Needs Regional Partnership

This was drawn up following work carried out with local authorities across London. Schools were receiving more resources to meet special educational needs, which meant that mainstream schools were able to provide a much wider range of strategies and resources without the need for a statutory assessment.

The joint criteria document provides:

Guidance on attainment levels that would show whether school action interventions were needed
Guidance on when it would be helpful for the school to ask for advice or support from professionals outside the school; and
Guidance on when a statutory assessment is likely to be needed

The joint criteria replaced a similar document we had previously drawn up and used. The earlier criteria was used to identify extra funding that would be made available to mainstream schools to meet a particular pupil's special educational needs.

Contact

Jonathan Butler

Special Educational Needs Team

Town Hall

1 Town Square

Barking

IG11 7LU

Tel: 020 8227 3018

Fax: 020 8227 3307

Textphone: 020 8227 3180

Email: jonathan.butler@lbbd.gov.uk|