Minister to target special needs 'scams' for pupils

The Sunday Times, 6th June 2010

The government is set to launch a review of special needs education amid concerns that schools and middle-class parents are exploiting the system to gain extra teaching help and more time in exams for pupils.

The review, to be announced in the next few weeks by Sarah Teather, the Liberal Democrat children’s minister, is expected to consider tightening up the criteria for registering a child as having special needs.

Its main focus will be on the highly bureaucratic system by which councils assess children with the greatest need.

In England, more than 19% of schoolchildren are classed as having a special need, compared with 5%-7% in most developed countries.

Critics argue the discrepancy is caused by “perverse incentives” that encourage some parents to obtain diagnoses of mild conditions such as dysnomia — the tendency to forget things — to gain extra teaching help and exam time.

In addition, head teachers use them to improve the league rating of their schools as they have their exam scores adjusted according to the number of children who have special needs.

By contrast, parents of children with the greatest special needs or disabilities are subjected to the rigours of the local authority “statementing” process.

Critics argue it gives an advantage to those with dogged determination and a legalistic frame of mind.

Many are defeated by councils wanting to ration the extra provision that a statement brings.

The government’s commitment to changing the system has been driven in part by the experience of David Cameron, the prime minister, in negotiating for services for his late son Ivan, who suffered cerebral palsy and epilepsy.

Sir Robert Balchin, pro-chancellor of Brunel University, commissioned by the Conservatives to report on special needs in 2007, said: “David Cameron has encountered the system himself and I know he is determined it should come under the microscope.”

A recent study by Matthew Macan, chairman of governors at Isca College of Media Arts, a secondary school in Exeter, found that the number of children on special needs registers at other schools in Devon had risen 82% since 2006, when they were first taken into account for league tables.

John Bald, a literacy consultant, said much of the system was “a scam” and many children had simply not been taught to read and write.

Bald said: “I had one 12-year-old girl see me recently who had never been shown how to use a pen. In the meantime, a series of overpaid goons have decided she’s autistic.”