Consultation outcome

Children and young people’s consultation: Changing the way we look into services for children and young people with SEND

Applies to England

This consultation has concluded

Read the full outcome

Detail of outcome

During the summer 2022, over 800 children and young people told us what they thought about some new ideas we had for area SEND inspections. You can read what everyone said in this report.

Our new inspections will begin in 2023. We have written a guide (called the inspection framework and handbook), which explains how we will do the area SEND inspections. The answers children and young people gave to our consultation have helped us to write this guide and improve the way we will do these inspections.

Thank you to all children and young people who took the time to answer our consultation. And thank you to any adults who helped you to give your answers.

We have also provided the responses to the consultation in British Sign Language (BSL): Changing area SEND inspections: response to the children and young people’s consultation - YouTube


Original consultation

Summary

Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) want to change the way we inspect services for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). This consultation asks children and young people what they think of these changes.

This consultation ran from
to

Consultation description

Who we are

Ofsted is best known for inspecting schools and colleges to make sure young people are getting the best possible education. You might have met an Ofsted inspector at your school or college.

We don’t just inspect schools and colleges. We also work with the Care Quality Commission to inspect local services for children and young people with SEND in the area where they live. This means we check the help that children and young people with SEND get at school, from health services, or from support workers, to make sure it is good enough.

The Care Quality Commission is like Ofsted but looks at health services, like hospitals, rather than schools and colleges. It is usually called the CQC.

What this consultation is all about

Changing the way we look into services for children and young people with SEND: BSL version

In 2014 the government made a law that said local services have to help children and young people with SEND. This law had a list of things that local services must do.

Inspectors check that local services are doing everything that the law says they have to do. In 2016 we wrote an inspection framework that said how we would do these checks. The most important part of our checks was making sure that local services were obeying the law.

Now we want to check if the help that local services give to children and young people makes their lives better. We will still make sure local services obey the law. But we will look much more at how well they actually help people. We want to understand what it is like to be a child or young person with SEND where you live.

These are the things we want to ask you about.

  1. Our inspectors want to check if the help that children and young people with SEND get makes their lives better. We want to know what you think of that.
  2. We also want to know whether you agree with the things we think inspectors should look at .
  3. We want to make it easier for children and young people with SEND to tell us what they think of the help they get. We have some ideas for this and we want to know what you think of them. We also want to know your ideas.

We need your help!

We want to change the way we inspect local services for children and young people with SEND. We want you to tell us whether you agree or disagree with these changes. Your answers will help us to decide what to do.

Please do a survey and tell us if you think that we are going to look at the right things.

Your parents or carers or your school or college can help you with the survey. They can [give us their views too at ‘Changing the way we look into services for children and young people with SEND.

Please give us your answers by 11 September 2022.

How to do the survey

You can take the online survey.

Download a copy of the survey below. Send your reply by email or post.

Documents

Children and young people’s consultation: Changing the way we look into services for children and young people with SEND – easy read

Request an accessible format.
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please email enquiries@ofsted.gov.uk. Please tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use.

Updates to this page

Published 13 June 2022
Last updated 29 November 2022 + show all updates
  1. Consultation response published.

  2. First published.

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