Consultation outcome

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

Updated 29 November 2022

Who we are

The Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted) checks the quality of education services in England. These checks are called inspections. We inspect places like schools, nurseries and childminders, as well as children’s social care.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspects the quality of health and social care services in England, like hospitals and care homes.

Together, we want to change the way we inspect the quality of services for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Children and young people with SEND may need extra help with their learning, health or care.

What we did

On 13 June 2022, we asked you to let us know what you thought about our new approach to area SEND 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 wanted your help to answer 4 questions. These were about what we plan to inspect, the questions we ask in the inspections and how we ask these questions. At the end of the consultation, we asked if you had any other ideas or comments about our new way of doing area SEND inspections. We have included your ideas and comments with the other questions in the consultation they link to.

The answers we got from you were very positive. They have helped us make sure that our new way of doing area SEND inspections will make the lives of children and young people with SEND better.

We received 843 answers to the children and young people’s consultation. This includes the responses we received to our easy-read version.

Some children and young people who took part in the consultation did not answer all the questions. We have still looked at the answers where they were given and have included them in this report. That’s why the number of answers we got were different for each question.

How we did it

We wrote about the consultation on our website and in social media.

During the consultation we talked to groups of children and young people with SEND about the survey we plan to use during our inspections. We met with these groups in places where you go to learn, like schools.

What we found out

When we looked at your answers to our questions, we noticed that there were 4 main things you told us:

1. Local services make decisions about the help you get, but do not always listen to you.
2. Local services should do more to make sure the help you are offered makes your life better.
3. You liked our children and young people survey but said we should make sure as many of you as possible can answer it.
4. You told us that our new way of doing area SEND inspections looks at the right things. But you wanted us to ask more questions about mental health.

Many of you said that the children and young people’s consultation gave you the chance to tell us what you think about the help you get, instead of us just asking your parents and carers what they think. However, some of your parents and carers told us that some of our questions were not easy to read and were difficult for you to answer.

Consultation questions

Question 1. How much do you agree or disagree that we should check if the help that you are getting makes your life better?

Figure 1: Responses to question 1.

Strongly agree	75%
Agree	21%
Neither agree nor disagree	2%
Disagree	1%
Strongly disagree	0%
Don’t know	1%

What you told us

Nearly all of you (over 90%) agreed that we should check if the help you are getting makes your life better. You said that this would help local services make sure they were doing everything they could to help you.

Some of you said that you were unsure about what would improve your life or that you find it hard to explain. Some of you said inspectors suggesting real-life examples could help you talk about what could improve your lives.

Our response

We are pleased that you agree we should be checking that the help you get makes your lives better. We will make sure that we do this when we start our new area SEND inspections. There is more information about how we will do this in the next sections.

Question 2: Do you agree that these are the right things to look at?

Figure 2: Responses to question 2

Strongly agree	71%
Agree	24%
Neither agree nor disagree	2%
Disagree	2%
Strongly disagree	1%
Don’t know	0%

We said we want to look at how well local services are:

• asking you about the help you need and listening to what you say

• making sure you get the right help at the right time

• making sure you are ready for what you want to do next, like start college or look for a job, or helping you to do more for yourself

• making you feel included and valued in the area where you live

What you told us

Almost all of you (over 90%) agreed that these were the right things to look at. Some of you said that our new way of doing SEND inspections would help make sure that you get the right help at the right time.

You told us about the help you get at the moment, and what you would like to change.

Some of you told us about the help you get at school. You thought it was important for you to have the right help from adults, like teachers and trained special educational needs coordinators (SENCo).

Many of you said that local services did not always give you the help that they said they would give you, even though it was written down in the plans for your education, health and social care (also called EHC plans).

You said that local services should do more to explain how they will give you the help they said they would.

You also said that sometimes local services told you that they could not give you help, because it would cost too much. You told us that this made you feel like they did not care about you.

You thought that local services did not communicate with you very well. One of you said, ‘People are deciding what they think is good for me and what they think I want, but they haven’t even asked me.’

You had different views about whether it was right for us to ask you about the help you get with going to college or getting a job. Some of you said it was hard for you to think about going to college or getting a job, because you may find it hard to do these things. Some of you said that learning things that would help you make more decisions by yourself could be just as important for making your life better as learning skills for work.

Our response

In your answers, you showed us how important you think it is that people listen to what you say about the help you get. As part of our new way of doing area SEND inspections, we will talk to children and young people to check that the adults that help you are working together to make things better for you. We have also made sure that our guide to area SEND inspections is clearer, so that you will know what we do with the information you give us on the help you get from local services.

Question 3: How can we make the surveys easier for you to tell us about the help you get?

We asked you if our new children and young people’s survey made it easy for you to tell us about the help you get.

What you told us

You told us that we could add cartoons to help explain words and ideas. Some of you also said we could use things other than surveys to ask you about your experiences.

A lot of you told us you want to be able to decide where you answer the survey. For example, some of you said you would prefer to be at home, but others wanted to be at school. You also said that you want to choose whether or not your teacher helps you answer the survey. Some of you would like this help, but some of you thought it would be difficult to say exactly what you feel, if a teacher was there with you.

Those of you who were in the groups we met with during the consultation told us that:

• you liked the colours and pictures, but would like more options to change them
• you thought there should be more multiple-choice questions, but you liked being able to add comments
• you thought the survey questions were too long
• you would like the questions to be translated into British Sign Language because it would make it easier for you to understand the survey

Our response

During the consultation, you told us what would make the survey better. We thought a lot about what you said, and it helped us to decide what to change in the survey.

Here is what we have changed:

• we added video, sound and pictures to help explain each question
• you can use a screen reader when doing the survey
• we made the survey more colourful
• you can go through the survey using the keyboard only
• the survey will also have a ‘save’ button, so you can start it and then finish it at another time
• you can write your answers on paper if you prefer

We hope these changes will make it easier for you all to answer our survey.

Question 4: Do you think we will be asking about the right things in our surveys?

Figure 3: Responses to question 4

Yes	85%
No	15%

What you told us

Many of you (85%) agreed that we were asking about the right things. But you also had plenty of ideas about how we could make the survey even better.

A lot of you said we should use real-life examples in our questions, because this would help you understand what we wanted you to tell us.

Many of you thought it was important for the survey to have questions about your mental health experiences. You also wanted us to ask about what makes you happy and what you enjoy doing. You said that this could include things like being able to make friends or going to clubs. A few of you thought we should ask about your family situations and your parents and carers’ feelings.

Those of you who were in the groups we met during the consultation told us that:

• you liked the questions that ask you about your needs
• some of you would not like an inspector to ask you questions about your experiences
• you did not understand what we meant when we asked you about the ‘support’ you get, and your ‘goals’

Our response

We have worked on the surveys to make sure that the questions are easy to understand for all of you. This includes making sure we explain words like ‘support’ (which means ‘help’) and ‘goals’ (which means ‘what you want to do or achieve’).

We have kept the question asking you about the help you need. There is also a text box for you to tell us about what is working well and how your help could be better. In the text box, you can tell us about things like your mental health experiences, if you want to.

We want to make sure we hear about the experiences of as many of you as possible. So, we also have more ways of doing this:

• inspectors will meet you with your parents or carers and local services, to talk about your experiences
• inspectors will visit places like schools, to check how well you are being helped

What will happen now

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 you gave to our consultation have helped us to write this guide and improve the way we will do these inspections.