Bristol Secondary Schools Resist Send Pupils Resource Bases

Mainstream secondary schools in the city are putting up ‘barriers’ against Bristol City Council, to preserve their results by not opening resource bases for pupils with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (Send).

Papers going to Overview and Scrutiny Management Board next month, addresses the specialist places shortage in the city. Although the council says it is ‘on target’ to exceed the 450 places it needs to create, they have experienced ‘barriers’ from secondary schools not wanting Send pupils in resource bases to ‘impact’ school results.

Papers say: ‘Negotiation is underway with schools who will be involved in phase 2, and there have been some issues with secondary mainstream schools not wanting to open resource bases as this will have an impact on their results. This has been a barrier and we are opting to work with special schools to mitigate this. We need a substantial number of secondary specialist places created in phase 2 to meet the needs of the city. We are on target to exceed 450 specialist provision places by 2024.’

The same paper also highlights attendance issues, school exclusions and the number of pupils going through the Bristol Improvement Panel. Whilst this was seen as a positive by the council, the Bristol Send community might worry about off rolling, given council concerns around secondary schools resisting Send pupils.

Lead Director comments from Fiona Tudge for the Children and Families Service said: ‘A detailed presentation was provided by the Head of Service for Inclusive City and Virtual Hope School which gave insight into attendance and gave the opportunity for further analysis and discussion. The meeting focussed on the indicator to tackle high levels of absence and suspensions in school. There are a number of initiatives underway to improve the levels of attendance and belonging in schools across the city. The Bristol Inclusion Panel (BIP) is already having an impact; 90 children were reviewed through the BIP process in Term 1 of 2021 compared to only 20 children in Term 2 this year.’

‘The number of suspensions for the first 6 months of this school year is 41 from primary schools and 368 at secondary schools. Although Tudge said that the figure was not representative of the number of sessions lost or number of pupils involved.

‘The attendance rate is being closely monitored through the Schools Attendance Network and there is work underway to support senior leaders in schools in their continued professional development,’ Tudge continued.

However, despite schools putting up barriers against Send pupils, she said: ‘Attendance is not solely a school issue, and the clinic raised the importance of partners working together to improve this. Public Health colleagues can contribute by ensuring pupils are physically healthy (immunisation programmes) and emotionally healthy so that they can attend school.’

Progress remains slow on attendance improvements, with a 03 per cent increase in suspension statistics for pupils on SEN support despite a 06 per cent decrease in suspensions for children and young people with an Education Health Care Plan (EHCP) in 2021/22.

But statutory Send support from Bristol City Council is still flagging, with the council failing to meet its timeliness target at issuing EHCPs.

From January to June 2022, Just 128 out of 356 new EHCPs were finalised within the legal 20 week timescale – excluding exceptions, which would be during the summer holidays.

Papers say: ‘We recognise the importance of timely needs assessments for children and young people and actively seek to make further improvements. Whilst waiting for needs assessments CYP can access Ordinarily Available Provision, Top Up funding and support through the graduated school?based response approach (assess, plan, do review).

‘We anticipate further improvements in the next quarter, but may fall short of the projected figure but will continue to aim for the year?end target of 50%. On October 4th 2022 the OFTSED and CQC SEND reinspection took place. The report will be published in the near future and will include a judgement relating to improvement in relation to the EHCP process.’

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