Home / HPCI Member update 20 September 2024
Welcome to the first update of this new academic year. I hope that you had a good summer and that the first few weeks of September have gone as smoothly as possible for your family.
This edition of the newsletter includes:
Update on Ofsted Inspections – Hertfordshire’s monitoring visit on hold
Following their “Big Listen” consultation, Ofsted have announced that they are going to review the current area SEND inspection framework. Area SEND inspections will continue but they say “we will hold off monitoring inspections until after we have completed our review.”
Hertfordshire was due to have a monitoring visit early in 2025 after it was found to have “widespread and/or systemic failings” in its last inspection. While we don’t yet know how long this pause will go on for, the improvement work is continuing and HPCI will be meeting with the Department for Education this month to give family views on the progress of this work.
Other outcomes from the “Big Listen” include a commitment to “putting vulnerable children, such as those… with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), at the heart of its reforms” and a move away from a single word judgement for schools, which will be replaced with a report card. You can read more about this here.
New Attendance Duties
The Government’s updated school attendance guidance came into force this term. These include new regulations on the use of fines for unauthorised absences, with families facing increased fines and the possibility of legal intervention. Many families whose child struggles to attend school, often because their SEND needs are not being met, are understandably concerned about what this might mean. We have asked HCC for an update on the Hertfordshire approach to the new guidance and they told us:
“Successfully treating the root causes of absence and removing barriers to attendance, at home, in school or more broadly requires schools and local partners to work collaboratively in partnership with, not against families. Hertfordshire County Council is committed to ensuring that the ethos and principles of the Department for Education’s School Attendance Guidance are upheld in Hertfordshire. We will make sure that all partners and stakeholders are aware of the need to build strong relationships and work jointly with families, listening to and understanding barriers to attendance and working in partnership with families to remove them.
Penalty notices are issued to parents as an alternative to prosecution where they have failed to ensure that their child of compulsory school age regularly attends the school where they are registered and are intended to prevent the need for court action. Hertfordshire County Council will ensure that they are only used where it is deemed likely to change parental behaviour and full support to secure regular attendance has been provided and has not worked or been engaged with, or would not have been appropriate e.g., an unauthorised holiday in term time.”
The section we have put in bold above highlights the need to work with parent carers – if you have any feedback on your family’s experience where attendance is an issue for your child, please do share it with us.
SEND service information (including waiting times)
There is a new section of the Local Offer website, which sets out current waiting times across a range of services, including autism and ADHD assessments; audiology; speech and language, occupational and physio therapies; and Children and Young People’s Mental Health Services (CYPMHS).
HPCI has been saying for a long time how important it is for families to have a clear idea about the wait times ahead of them and how to get support while they are waiting. This new page is a helpful step in the right direction on this (although we know there is still a lot to be done to reduce the waiting times).
Webinar: Local Offer (25 September, 8:00pm)
The Local Offer website is a central hub of information about all things SEND in Hertfordshire and it is constantly being updated. If you haven’t used it before, or haven’t looked at it for a while, the council’s Local Offer team are running a webinar to take families through the website and how to use it. The session is taking place on Wednesday 25 September 8pm – 9pm and you can join the meeting by clicking here.
Activity for children and young people: “My voice in art” competition (closes 27 September)
HCC is holding an art competition for the children and young people with SEND. They are looking for pieces of art that express how your child likes to communicate and those who take part can win an art session with CathARTic. You can have a look at the poster here for more information – the competition closes on 27 September.
HPCI update
I hope you will join me in welcoming some new staff to HPCI. Andrea Reid and Emma Jones have both joined us in part time roles, supporting our parent reps to be as effective as possible in representing the views and experiences of families.
Lynn Turnbull and Elaine Worton have joined us to lead on delivering the parent carer element of the new Partnership for Inclusion of Neurodiversity in Schools (PINS) project, which is running in 25 Hertfordshire primary schools until March 2025.
PINS is a national project which is looking to help improve the experience of mainstream school for children with additional educational needs. You can find out more about HPCI’s role in the project as it develops here.