19 January 2024
The Department for Education (DfE) have announced today that they will be amending the school census to include Down’s syndrome as a separate category. This will provide, from 2025 onwards, a better understanding of how and where children with Down’s syndrome are being educated. This is no bad thing – over a period of time it will allow tracking of trends in movement between types of settings (mainstream and special schools for example) and across geographical areas.
However, the collection of new data in itself does not necessarily bring about meaningful change – inclusion in a school census will not automatically lead to a better understanding of needs, greater inclusion or improved outcomes for any students with Down’s syndrome. There are already a wide range of SEN ‘types’ collected by the census, many of whom face the same significant and longstanding barriers to learning and inclusion that led us to the SEND Review in the first place. There are also numerous examples from other areas of the system which continue to provide us with clear data demonstrating deeply problematic processes such as the huge increase in appeals and cases found in favour of parents at the SEND Tribunal, and the appalling school exclusion rates which have shown children with SEND being disproportionately affected over many years. Data has been used to identify these problems, but actions have yet to take place to resolve them.
In today’s announcement DfE refer to the census in the context of their commitment to ‘improving the life outcomes and opportunities for people with Down’s syndrome’. As it stands, the single defining opportunity to improve the educational outcomes of this generation of children with Down’s syndrome is through the current SEND Review and its Improvement Plan. Like many organisations representing children with SEND, the DSA were extremely disappointed when, after much anticipation, the Improvement Plan was announced in March 2023 – this was a genuine opportunity to learn from significant failures in the past and present transformational change to a system on its knees. What we got instead were a set of plans which had some good ideas (and some bad…), but which overwhelmingly failed to acknowledge or address they key systematic problems at the heart of the matter – the need for greater accountability in the system, the lack of vital provision and support to meet the identified needs of children and young people, and the development of a genuinely inclusive educational system.
So, where now? Although the government are moving forwards with the SEND Improvement Plan, many of the timelines included in the plan will be affected by the forthcoming election. Will there be a change in government, if so how will this affect these reforms? We know many of our families feel they have been promised much with the forthcoming Down Syndrome Act guidance and we continue to work with the team developing the guidance to make it as effective as possible. However, the sections of this guidance which cover education will not stand separately or supersede any of the plans and outcomes of the SEND Review (or current legislation, which is not changing), nor will they prioritise children with Down’s syndrome over others, in a system which will correctly continue to focus on identified needs above any diagnosis. Within education, the systematic issues which affect the outcomes of children with Down’s syndrome are predominantly those which affect all children with SEND, and we will continue to work with our members, colleagues across the voluntary sector and government to implement the changes that will achieve the best outcomes possible for them.
Want to know more about the school census and the data that it collects? There’s a helpful article on Special Needs Jungle that covers the issue in more detail.