This is very depressing, Joel, and it is clear that the Awards Officers are
acting contrary to the letter and spirit of their own guidelines. As has
been pointed out, there is no obligation on them to regard Assessors as
the sole aritrators of what is required. At the same time, if a report
agrees with what you have put forward and recommends payment, I can see no
justification for refusing it. The only potential argument is if support
is arranged without any prior notification and they are asked for
retrospective agreement. On the other hand, in the past I solved this
problem by phoning or writing a brief letter describing the problem and
what I intended doing. I invariably received conditional agreement which
was confirmed when a later Access Centre report appeared. The situation
you describe sounds like officious defence of Authority autonomy which has
nothing to do with providing appropriate support for students (the only
relevant criterion for such decisions).
My suggestion is that you get the individual students to request written
justification (by a named individual) for any refusal and make a formal
complaint to the director of education for the LEA. (Students often need
a great deal of support in this, but ultimately they are the only people
involved to whom the Awards Officers have to answer.) At the very least,
this should result in a clearer definition of the working practices of the
Authority and some consistency in their future working. I share your
frustration: this is all so unnecessary.
Regards, Bernard
Quoting "Petrie, Joel" <[log in to unmask]>:
> Regarding very late DSAs, Bernard Doherty wrote "If an assessment report
> recommends support, it should be costed for the academic year and I have
> never seen a problem with claiming (or recommending) it
> retrospectively."
>
> We're still having this problem and wondered if anyone could offer any
> solutions. We obviously put support in place irrespective of a
> student's DSA status - but with the tightness of post 16 budgets
> recouping at least some of the cost of this support is a priority. In
> relation to Bernard's point some LEAs are categorically unwilling to
> fund support put in place prior to Needs Assessment, even though the
> total amount would be well within the allocation for non-medical helper
> support per annum.
>
> We facilitate Ed Psych Reports for our learners, often before the start
> of their course. We also have an excellent relationship with a local
> assessment centre; they are extremely efficient and get reports done
> ASAP and copied back often within days. The sticking point in the
> process seems to be (some) LEAs, who are routinely losing correspondence
> from our students, taking months to respond with consent to proceed with
> a Needs assessment, sending back Ed Psych Reports as being unacceptable
> despite the same format being accepted by every other LEA we've dealt
> with.
>
> Is this an unusual situation or is the system obstructive elsewhere?
>
> Joel
>
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