Joining the Dots SEN report: Parliamentary launch with the Driver Youth Trust
16th October 2015
Thank you to Trevor Jackson (@project128) for filming speeches at Wednesdays launch of our Driver Youth Trust, Joining the Dots report.
Speakers were:
- Anita Kerwin-Nye: Director, Not Dead Fish
- Sarah Driver: Chair, Driver Youth Trust
- Loic Menzies: Director, LKMco
- Maria Constantinou: Deputy Head and SLE, St Mary’s Primary School
You can read the full report and press release here
#DYTreport I have many concerns about this report & the way it has been portrayed in the media. The sampling was limited and no rationale has been given in terms of the research methodology. It should also be noted the report does make any reference the research ethics.
These things aside, I want to focus on two aspects:
1) What is the end game? DYT commissioned the report & their support for SpLD is one of the eight case studies cited. One of the key elements of the SEND reforms is to shift the imbalance of parental confidence in the system (Lamb, 2009). One person’s metaphor of a fragmented system became the central thread of the report. As a change programme, we are currently in the second year of implementation. The SEND reforms in its entirety is a 7 year change cycle. So in publishing this report what ethical & social responsibility considerations were given to the impact?
2) The author on Twitter has said the report is not a full review & one of the Directors of DYT stated they (i.e. the Comissioners) want parity between Pupil Premium funding & SEN finance & funding. In that vein, ring-fencing & a number of other copy-cat recommendations have been put forward without any consideration of the consequences. I would like to see a follow up paper on the consequences of the recommendations in the #DYTreport. If the recommendations cannot be implemented, it is just giving false hope & expectations to individuals, families and organisations who want to genuinely see the system improve. The metaphorical line between fragmented & multi-faceted analogies is fine.
Thanks for your comments, you’re absolutely right that it’s early days and much of our message here is positive, we were really excited to see some of the great practice that’s already emerging (of course you can never know how the media will end up portraying things!) We were also pleased by people’s responses in that many have found it useful to have a report that reviews progress so far and helps clarify what will need to happen as reforms bed-in.
On methodology, as we acknowledge, the report is largely a synthesis of the views of the key informants we spoke to rather than being a large scale study- hence several recommendations about the need to commission full reviews which you’re right- would be really useful in helping capture more data than we were able to do in this piece of work. Thanks again for your thoughts, hopefully over the next few months we’ll be able to build up and increasingly comprehensive picture of what’s going on as a result of further conversations and research.
Loic and Eleanor