Shake up for Ofsted inspections of deaf children

Last week, I blogged about the first of two interim reports from the Lamb inquiry into parental confidence in the SEN system. The second one looked at an issue which NDCS has been pestering the Government about for ages – the deaf awareness of Ofsted inspectors.

The pestering commenced last summer when we published our Must do better! report into the barriers holding deaf children back at school. In it, we called for a stronger focus on deafness at Ofsted, pointing out that if inspections of provision for deaf children are not conducted with the necessary rigour, underpinned by good awareness and expertise in deafness, Ofsted cannot play an effective role in driving up standards for deaf children. If the line sounds rehearsed, then it’s because it’s something I’ve been saying with alarming regularity since then.

For example, earlier this year, we asked Glenda Jackson MP to table a PQ about it which elicited an interesting reply from Ofsted. We followed this by briefing the Children, Schools and Families Select Committee on this issue. John Heppell MP directly challenged the Head of Ofsted on the issue. And more recently, we sent a submission to the Lamb inquiry highlighting some of the examples we’d come across of Ofsted inspectors being deaf unaware.

All of this has culminated in the Lamb inquiry proposing that a) Ofsted inspectors should be specifically required to report on provision for children with special educational needs in all school reports and b) that inspectors should have more disability awareness training. The Government has already accepted these recommendations.

I’m not sure NDCS can take all of the credit for this, but I think we’ve been a leading figure in putting the issue on the agenda. If anything, we deserve an award for refusing to shut up about it. And now we’ve got a great result which should result in big improvements in the way Ofsted do inspections.

What do you think? Do you think it will have a positive impact? Leave a comment below with your thoughts.

MPs debate deaf children and the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

MPs have now gone through the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning (ASCL) Bill, line by line, and considered all of the amendments. Such was their determination to do it, they ended up staying up in Parliament until well past midnight. This left me with an image of MPs sitting in a room with their pyjamas, clutching hot water bottles and teddy bears, but anyhow…

NDCS concerns got raised a few times which we were pleased with. Anything that raises the needs of deaf children within Parliament is always good news. Here’s a very brief run down of what was said:

1) Teacher training. We want the Government to give teachers an explicit entitlement to training if a child with special educational needs enters the classroom. Currently, it’s proposed that all employers will have the right to request training. We think teachers need to be proactively encouraged and enabled to take up training to work with children with special educational needs – and given a clear entitlement to this.

The Government made some positive noises about ongoing efforts to improve teacher training so that teachers know how to work with children with SEN. But no new rights. So we’ll continue to lobby on this.

2) Ofsted. We wanted an amendment that would make sure that a school couldn’t be given a ranking of good or outstanding unless provision for children with special educational needs is also good or outstanding. The Minister said it would be “highly unlikely” if this happened. This in itself was helpful and gives us something to hold the Government to account to. But then again, we were left wondering that if it will be highly unlikely, why not make it completely impossible? So again, we’ll be continuing to lobby the Government on this.

3) Acoustics. We again made our call for pre-completion acoustic testing to be required in all schools. Here, we were disappointed by the Government’s response which pretty much said that a review was ongoing. It didn’t really respond to any of the concerns raised and didn’t take us any further forward. You can guess what we’ll be doing next.

There was also a bit of debate over apprenticeships and disabled people which I’ll come back to another time as we’ve had some interesting correspondence with Government officials on this.

So when will we get to do some more lobbying? The Bill will soon have its third reading in the House of Commons where MPs basically tie up loose ends. Then it will be the turn of the House of Lords to look at the Bill. The plan is to engage with and brief peers on our concerns on the Bill in the aim of making improvements to benefit deaf children.

Trying to change the law on Ofsted

I mentioned that we’re trying to get the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill amended so that Ofsted can’t relax the inspection process for “good/outstanding” schools unless the inspector knows their stuff about deafness, and unless provision for children with special educational needs is also good/outstanding.

Well, we’ve taken the first step by drafting and suggesting an amendment. We’ve given it to a MP, Annette Brooke who has been a big supporter in the past and happily, she has agreed to put forward the amendment. It will get debated later this month by a committee of MPs who are scrutinising the Bill in more detail. Hopefully they will agree it’s a good idea.

Our amendment will change clause 210. And the committee has yet to get to clause 40 and they meet twice a week – so I suspect it will be a while before get to debate it though. So in the meantime, I’ve been drafting a briefing that tries to sell the case for this amendment and will be sending it out to MPs this week.

Will keep updating on the progress on this one – so watch this space.

Deaf children and Ofsted: inspecting the inspectors

Have been spending a lot of time recently on the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill – which I call the ASCL Bill for short, mainly because I can never hit the ‘c’ bit in Apprenticeships without falling over my words, and sometimes literally just falling over.

It’s the first time as a campaigns officer I’ve got my teeth into looking at detail through a Bill and exploring possible changes and amendments to it – so I’m on an exciting learning curve. One change we’re leading on is the proposal around the education inspection agency Ofsted which touches on one of our objectives for our Close the Gap campaign.

The Bill proposes that schools get a ‘health check’ rather than a full blown inspection if they are ‘good’ or ‘excellent’. So we have tabled an amendment to the draft law that would have the effect of making school health checks conditional on whether the school has been inspected by someone who has good awareness of the needs of children with special educational needs. This is because NDCS we’ve come across several examples in the past of units for deaf children being inspected by people who clearly knew nothing about deafness and did not even know how to communicate with deaf children. Any conclusions they make are clearly not going to be particularly helpful.

Being realistic, and me being cynical, I think it’s unlikely the amendment will be accepted by the Government. But at the very least, there will be a helpful debate on this in Parliament and it will be a powerful means of getting our point on this across to decision makers.

I’ve also attended a few meetings on the ASCL Bill with a range of other charities to see how we can link up. One issue that I hadn’t spotted before – but now have thanks to these meetings – is that the Bill would require you to have a good GCSE in English to do an advanced apprenticeship. There is apparently no exception for children whose disability makes it much less likely for them to get a good GCSE in English. For deaf children whose first language is British Sign Language, it’s a clear, discriminatory barrier to doing an apprenticeship. So it’s likely we’ll be making noises about this too.

The ASCL Bill is making its way through Parliament now – so watch this space.

New education legislation hits Parliament – what does it mean for deaf children?

The Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill was introduced to Parliament yesterday in what the wonks call it’s ‘First Reading’. It used to be called the Children, Skills and Learning Bill but clearly someone decided that it wasn’t catchy enough and combined it with another draft Bill on apprenticeships. I will henceforth call the new Bill the ASCL Bill – mainly because apprenticeships is one of those words I haven’t had enough speech therapy to be able to pronounce properly.

Anyhow, the contents of the Bill haven’t yet been published though we have a rough idea what will be in it. The main focus will be on dealing with the impact of the raising of the school leaving age to 18 in the future. One major point we’ll be banging on about is that children who are deaf or who have special educational needs are disproportionately represented in children who currently leave school at 16. So if these kids are going to be forced to stick around, the system needs to be equipped to offer a high quality education.

And some of the key areas we’ll be looking at include:

* There’s a proposal that if schools are ranked as ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted, they can be inspected less frequently. We want to make sure that no school can be ranked good or excellent unless they have excellent provision for pupils for children with special educational needs – and for this to be assessed by an inspector with expert knowledge in provision for children with such needs.

* Local authorities will now be responsible for school transport for pupils older than 16. NDCS’s Family Officers report a wide range of problems when it comes to deaf children and school transport so we’ll be seeking to address this through the Bill.

* The Bill is likely to introduce a right to request training for everyone. We want this to go further by introducing a new right to training for teachers if a child with special educational needs enters their classroom.

And there’s a whole range of other points – it will be an important Bill for NDCS this year. We’ll be working closely with other charities in the sector – and may be calling on our members to get involved. So, as always, watch this space and let us know if you have any thoughts or comments.