Children with special needs or disabilities (FOI)

Request

A

How many children and young people under 25, have a diagnosed special need or disability?

B

How many currently access primary schools including specialist provisions?

C

What level of support do primary aged children currently receive? eg school action, action plus and record of need.

D

In terms of budget how much money is currently allocated to support children and young people with special needs (0 to 25 years) in health, education, social security and short breaks / respite?

Response

Children, Young People, Education and Skills – Response:

The Education Department does not collate data on children and young people with a diagnosed special need or disability.

Rather, The Education Department collates data on children and young people who have Special Educational Needs (SEN). A Special Educational Need is defined in the Education (Jersey) Law 1999 and in the Jersey SEN Code of Practice as follows:

Part 1, Article 4 Special educational needs etc.

(1) For the purposes of this Law, a child has “special educational needs” if the child has a learning difficulty which calls for special educational provision to be made for the child.

(2) For the purposes of this Law, subject to paragraph (3), a child has a “learning difficulty” if

(a) the child has a significantly greater difficulty in learning than the majority of children of the child’s age;

(b) the child has a disability which either prevents or hinders the child from making use of educational facilities of a kind generally provided for children of the child’s age in provided schools; or

(c) the child is below compulsory school age and is, or would be if special educational provision were not made for the child, likely to fall within sub-paragraph (a) or (b) when the child is of compulsory school age.

 B

The Education Department holds a central inclusion register for all children with SEN. This is broken down into categories of need as follows:

C

There are currently three levels of support provided within Jersey schools:

High Quality teaching

Personalised for individual pupils, high quality teaching is the first step in responding to pupils who have or may have SEN.

SEN Support Level

There is an expectation that schools are responsible for arrangements at the level of SEN Support. This is termed ‘ordinarily available provision’ which broadly represents up to 15 hours additional adult support (or equivalent arrangement) per week.

The very significant majority of pupils with SEN in mainstream schools will be supported with ordinarily available (OA) provision. The Ordinarily Available document provides schools with a detailed account of how they might be expected to use the money delegated to them for SEN. This ensures an accountable approach to the use of delegated SEN funds.

Record of Needs Level

If a pupil requires arrangements that are significantly beyond the descriptors for ordinarily available provision the child will be issued with a Record of Needs and may as a result have:

• a placement in a mainstream school with higher level (banded) funding or

• a placement in an Additionally Resourced Centre (ARC) within a mainstream school or

• a placement in a Special School (MAL or La Sente)

The table below shows current figures for pupils with SEN Support or a Record of Needs.

D 

SEN Financial Figures only include children and young people aged 0-19.

Health and Social Services – Response:

The information is not recorded in a reportable format for the purposes of this request.

It is not possible to provide a response as the process to extract and quality assure the requested information would exceed the 12.5 hour permitted timeframe for answering Freedom of Information requests. Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has therefore been applied.

Article applied

Article 16 A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.

Regulation 2 (1) of the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014 allows an authority to refuse a request for information where the estimated cost of dealing with the request would exceed the specified amount of the cost limit of £500. This is the estimated cost of one person spending 12.5 working hours in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.