Major changes to national economic and social policy during the research period have had and/or are likely to have a significant impact on the family lives and education of the very vulnerable children involved in the study.
Bradshaw and Main (2014) argue that the improvements in the UK in relation to child poverty and wellbeing gained during the first decade of the 2000s have been
threatened by the global financial crisis. They suggest that the subsequent austerity measures and the burden of austerity have fallen particularly heavily on children.
The office of the Children’s Commissioner for England (2013) has studied the impact of austerity measures on children in detail and concluded:
The analysis of the tax, benefit and tax credit systems has shown that
successive policies have led to families with children losing a greater share of their income than those without children. It is also of great concern that some of the most vulnerable families with children are losing proportionately the most (p.6).
During this period of austerity, however, the Coalition government has protected day-to-day spending on schools (Lupton and Thomson, 2015). Total expenditure has risen by 1% from £46.1bn in 2009/2010 to £46.6 bn (in real terms in 2009/2010 prices). This has allowed pupil-teacher and pupil-adult ratios to be maintained, although capital expenditure has fallen dramatically by 57%.
The introduction of the pupil premium has directed more money to schools with intakes from disadvantaged groups. In 2015-16 the premium was set at £1320 per eligible primary school pupil. All types of primary schools have gained, especially the most deprived. While eligible looked-after children previously attracted the same pupil premium as deprived children, in 2014-15 the pupil premium plus was introduced, meaning that all current and some former looked-after children are to attract £1900 additional funding. The pupil premium plus has also been extended to adopted children.
In July 2014 Ofsted (Ofsted, 2014a) published its view on the progress schools have made in using the pupil premium funding to raise the achievements of those pupils who are eligible to receive it. It concluded that:
There are encouraging signs from inspection that the concerted efforts of good leaders and teachers are helping to increase outcomes for pupils eligible for the pupil premium. However, it will take time to establish whether this increased focus will lead to a narrowing of the attainment gap between those eligible for the premium and other pupils.
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Lupton and Thomson (2015) argue that the pupil premium has ‘shifted more
resources to schools serving children from disadvantaged families in a way that has become more pronounced as its value has increased.’ They also concluded that, ‘at a time when other spending cuts have disproportionately affected poorer
households, these policies stand out for their progressive intent.’
The Education Act 2011 is also in the early stages of implementation. The Act broke up local authority responsibilities for the state school system and by 2014; one in ten primary schools had become Academies. However, there is no clear research
evidence available yet to determine whether pupils in Academies perform better or worse than those in the local-authority managed schools they replaced. It is also too early to assess the full impact of other reforms to the curriculum, assessment and teacher training. Lupton and Thomson conclude the school system is in ‘flux’ and that the key issues of equity and achievement remain ‘unresolved’.
The impact of changes relating to children with special educational needs and their families that were introduced by the Children and Families Act 2014 are also too recent to assess. However, the proposed changes were piloted and evaluated for the Department for Education under the Special Educational Needs Pathfinder
Programme (Spivack et al. 2014). The evaluation found that areas appeared to retain their previous approaches to eligibility. Therefore the children who had been expected to be eligible for a Special Educational Needs (SEN) Statement were similarly expected to be eligible for a new Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan.
However, the EHC planning pathway was found to be different from that for the SEN statement process:
• the family was much more involved through the coordinated assessment and planning stages;
• children’s social care professionals were involved throughout the Education, Health and Care (EHC) planning process, while their
involvement in the SEN statement process had generally been limited to completion of a form during Statutory Assessment; and,
• the new process produced a plan which was more family and outcome focused and resulted in a more comprehensive understanding of the child.
However, challenges still remained in relation to coordination/cooperation between agencies and ensuring that the EHC plan coordinator had sufficient time to deliver a meaningful plan for each family.
In March 2013 the Department for Education published significant changes to the statutory guidance, Working Together to Safeguard Children (Department for
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Education, 2013). This reaffirmed that safeguarding children is everyone’s responsibility, and all professionals and organisations involved in children’s lives need to play their full part. It restated that for services to be effective they must adopt a child-centred approach and be based on a clear understanding of the need and views of children. However, the revised guidance - condensing 700 pages into 95 - aimed to reduce the bureaucracy involved in child protection procedures and give social workers a greater role in every-day decision-making. There was a new
emphasis within the guidance on the need to provide intensive early help to address children and families’ problems. More specifically, the changes included the removal of the statutory distinction between initial and core assessments and began a
process of removing statutory timescales for assessments to allow cases to be driven by children’s needs rather than arbitrary timeframes.
The government has also introduced radical changes to the Family Justice System which, Sir James Munby, President of the Family Division, has described as ‘... the largest reform of the family justice system any of us have seen or will see in our professional lifetimes’ (Muller, 2014). The changes are a response to the
recommendations of the independent Family Justice Review (Ministry of Justice, Department for Education and the Welsh Government, 2011). They aim to cut delays and improve the overall functioning of the system.
A new Family Court has been introduced in England and Wales, replacing a three-tier system with a single court. Most judges now sit in the same building and there is a more thorough allocation process. These changes should help to reduce the delays previously caused by the transfer of cases between the different levels of court. The reforms also introduced a 26 week time limit for care proceedings to further reduce the delays in these cases. Expert evidence in family proceedings concerning children is now only permitted when necessary to resolve the case justly, taking account of factors including the impact on the welfare of the child.
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