This week I highlight the DfE’s new attendance toolkit providing good practice advice for schools and key findings from the Public Accounts Committee on SEND.

DfE Attendance toolkit
The DfE has released a new Attendance toolkit for schools providing good practice advice around improving attendance.

Key findings from the Public Accounts Committee on SEND
On Monday a Public Accounts Committee Hearing was held reviewing the findings of a highly critical National Audit Office report on the support available for young people with SEND. Key points from the session were for the DfE to:

• consider criticism that the SEND and Alternative Provision Improvement Plan introduced by the previous government didn’t go far enough and look at a report by the Isos Partnership, commissioned by councils, which made a series of recommendations this summer;
• work with the Treasury on LA’s challenging dedicated schools grant deficits. A statutory override, which keeps these deficits off council books, is set to expire in March 2026 and the NAO report warned that 43% of councils would be at risk of issuing a Section 114 notice (effectively declaring bankruptcy) if these deficits were allowed to impact on their financial position;
• work with the SEND tribunal on statistics given that 98% of EHCP appeals in 2023 had been found in parents’ favour and that potentially the system favoured those parents with the capacity to navigate it;
• look at variability in the length of time it took LA’s to produce EHCPs and the proportion of pupils with EHCPs being educated in mainstream schools.

DfE officials confirmed the department’s commitment to inclusion highlighting the appointment of multi-academy trust chief executive Tom Rees as an adviser who would be helping it with work on inclusive practice, the curriculum and assessment review that was being led by Professor Becky Francis, looking at what barriers existed within the mainstream school curriculum and the fact that Ofsted was set to inspect inclusion as part of its new framework being launched next year. They also highlighted the new national professional qualification for SENDCo’s and said that this was also being taken by aspiring school leaders which was growing a “cadre of leaders who will essentially increase the confidence of a school overall”.