Half of all 2002/3-born Welsh children were granted SEN provision. However, against a backdrop of compounding dysfunction in Scotland and England, Wales turned the ship around. How 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 grasped the nettle and fixed its special needs system: a comprehensive summary. 🧵1/25

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Quoting post, now deleted

It's important to clarify that if numbers go down, especially if consciously government/reform-driven, post-reform implementation has to make sure that costs also fall/do not rise. As we've seen in Wales, the two measures do not by any means necessarily move together.

My other point is that many (naturally) link "X in-/de-crease in cases" to "X in-/de-crease in spending". Understandable, but as we see in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 X leap in cases certainly does not mean the govt will follow up with X leap in funds. In 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 ALN cases are down but spending on ALN is up.

Wales is also having problems with children presenting with complex needs – obviously they would be recorded ALN - but the point is that that their being on the register or not is (obviously) separate from their outcomes.

This is well illustrated by this pretty harrowing case from Scotland ( https://t.co/FgGHEDThJ1) about a clearly disabled child with complex needs who could not access specialist support. She would certainly be recorded as ASN but real provision for her is almost non-existent.

Wales's system may well be dysfunctional still, but it cannot be said, like Scot/Eng, to have overdiagnosis. If there are problems in the system it won’t be from there being too many/too few children under the ALN umbrella.

In Scotland the focus is the hollowed-out state of the system, on the YoY swell in cases, on chaotic "mainstreaming". Both are obviously dysfunctional, but in vastly different ways – the common denominator is a degree of overdiagnosis, whether for EHCPs or ASN designation.

I've posted before about the almost opposite cases of Scotland and England: that England's system seems to be ingrained in the public imagination as wasteful, overgenerous, expensive and bearing down on LAs, with SEN kids somewhat segregated or "othered" from their peers.

Quite a few see the big decline in cases as underprovision. SNAP Cymru and Ms Asghar both took the big headline reduction (and for SNAP the near-identical reduction in associated guidance requests) as evidence that children are being missed out - which I don't see as accurate.

If the last is true, we may not know if there are real failures. But that is not to say there are. Let us return to the funding dimension for now, because I think it does prove that the above criticism is essentially a myth.

Some actual policy critiques I've heard: Educational standards in Wales have fallen in comparison with England (Pisa); Estyn is inadequate (vs Ofsted); no academy-type system to give power to local school leaders; and BBC Wales pays little attention to local policy anyway.

That one seems to be an ongoing development, more so than the others, and is subject to change. The idea of a mass under-identification of real cases is fundamentally wrong. I have gone over some reasons why above and below but this does not show up in policy discussion.

Back to "needs not being met": in the Estyn review above, they note that more kids are potentially presenting with more complex needs, which may not be being met. WalesGov did also acknowledge that more children were presenting with more complex needs: https://t.co/azu5SDB1hh.

Re "inconsistent/nebulous", this is something which comes up in reviews of the system. This ( https://t.co/gM8pJNm2Qc) speaks of "empty architecture", "ghosts" of content re ALN provision/Code. The Estyn review ( https://t.co/6UvAMQqVPg) also mentions inconsistent implementation.

Of these, the last two are really the main criticisms. All four were addressed by the CabSec in her statement to the Senedd. There's also a related consultation document here, which does cover parents' worries over implementation. https://t.co/65My3kpoVp https://t.co/fZYiokbYNB

- Too hard to get an IDP (essentially a duplicate of the "slipping through the cracks" issue) - ALNCOs are overworked/workload is too broad/poorly defined - ALN Code not good enough/information for parents hard to find/patchy/nebulous - The new system is applied inconsistently

But ALN shortcomings do NOT stem from what this person above describes. I will go through some of the main, recurring critiques of the new system. I identify four major categories.

And another, from October again (the 14th, during the Senedd sitting, just after the Cabinet Secretary's raft of announcements): this one is a political attack from the Tory benches, however. https://t.co/4NZeZDvR1e

One thing that also kept cropping up and why I didn't want to declare the problem solved was that (reminiscent of the Herald's ASN investigation) there were stories of parents/carers/children being genuinely "failed by the system". https://t.co/siLPh6gEmW https://t.co/9rsali7LxM