In September this year, inspectors from both OSTED and CQC carried out a revisit to look at the areas of weakness identified in the original SEND inspection in 2018. The letter detailing the outcome of this visit has just been published on the Ofsted website.
The Inspector’s remit was to assess whether sufficient progress had been made in addressing the areas of significant weakness detailed in the Written Statement of Action (WSOA) . We are very pleased that in four of the five improvement areas that were identified, we have been found to have made sufficient progress. This is a credit to all those colleagues in Stockport who have worked over the last few years to bring improvements. We are particularly proud that inspectors found that the profile of SEND has been raised in Stockport and that we have embedded “SEND is everyone’s business”.
We were also very proud that inspectors commented that “leaders across education, health and social care understand the needs and outcomes of their children and young people well now.” And furthermore that “Leaders are honest in their evaluation of the progress that has been made since the previous inspection and the work still to be done.”
Whilst we recognise the many positive things highlighted in the letter we know there is still more to do. Specifically we know we must accelerate our work to improve the assessment process on some children and young people’s social care needs. This was the one area where inspectors have concluded that we have further improvements to make. We have already begun our further focussed work on this and have established a working group to develop an accelerated improvement plan. This will be monitored by DFE in the coming months.
Our commitment to improving our SEND offer is unwavering and will continue with you in the coming weeks and months to ensure that SEND is everyone’s business. If you would like to become involved in the work or to discuss further then please contact us on send-ip@stockport.gov.uk