At last some light can be shed on one of the great mysteries of Sir Albert Bore’s new administration: whatever happened to Birmingham’s Special Educational Needs and Disability Strategy?
This important document setting out Labour’s approach to SEND and the growing demand by parents for children to have their needs assessed and addressed was supposed to have been approved by the cabinet months ago.
The first three drafts were rejected, it is said by Sir Albert himself, because they contained pages of meaningless psycho-twaddle and did not propose how the city council could provide for the 42,000 youngsters already assessed with varying forms of special needs within a £100 million budget.
A copy of the fourth draft, complete with the usual spelling and grammatical horrors, has made its way to me, and I imagine that Sir Albert will already be reaching angrily for his waste paper bin.
The document is not short on grand statements and pledges, beginning with: “We aim for an educational journey where every child will learn to think for themselves and act for others.”
Well, don’t we all? But how is this to be achieved?
The vision-thing continues with some quite torturous sentences.
We learn that a priority is “ensuring dignity and safety through the adoption of dignified and safe processes”. Social cohesion is to be promoted “through the active inclusion of young people with special educational needs and disabilities through the whole population” and an “inclusive economy” is to be supported by “preparing young people with special needs to play a full part in developing Birmingham into a prosperous city”.
Ineffectual delivery by this SEN Section is highlighted here, putting out a rubbish Paper for a Strategy doesn’t bring in efficiency savings … quite the opposite.
Solution is to locate the chain of accountability for such shambles!
Paul Dales cynical tone is so wrong in this posting. Its about the cuts stupid! #birmingham
this is meaningless comment to make. if what is rumoured about this current version of the SEN Strategy are even half true this is nothing to do with cuts and all about a commitment to a perverse form of “inclusion”.
cuts are a serious issue but are separate to this
This isnt cynicism its realism
It may be better for the Council to move towards delivering support for Special Needs children rather than placing them on this Merry go Round of working out a Strategy.
Is it a deliberate attempt to keep this as ‘work in progress’ as a means of not having to help these children?
if there is indeed a fourth version of the much-vaunted SEN Strategy then it needs to be noted that none of the previous three versions bear much resemblance to each other.
There have been several other ‘strategies’ over the last decade, all of which share a central theme of ‘inclusion’ – or at least a perverse interpretation of the word which involves criticising special schools incessantly.
the last major attempt was so criticised it became one of Eleanor Brazil’s last acts to scupper it and set some ground rules for a new attempt…….
This resulted in what is now called an ‘independent report’ drafted by 2 Head Teachers which was weak and confused. This then got re-written by a consultant friend of Peter Duxbury. And now we have another version?
the only thing as consistent as the notion of ‘inclusion’ is the part in the SEN debate played by the Chief Education Psychologist – Chris Atkinson. Isn’t about time that elected members realise that she is the fly in the ointment?
@ChamberlainFile excellent article. That SEN Strategy is the Rasputin of BCC. Politicians keep trying to kill it but it just won’t die
Motherhood and apple pie from the Birmingham City Council; unfortunately in a very important area