“In IPSEA's experience, vaguely written Statements are at the root of many of the situations which cause parents to seek advice. For example: * The major and most common problem facing parents whose children have vaguely worded Statements is that no particular level of provision is guaranteed. Thus 'regular speech therapy' is virtually meaningless: Christmas dinner is regular; so is Halley's comet. Many parents contact IPSEA for advice when their statemented child has his or her provision reduced. There is little, legally, we can advise them to do unless the provision in the Statement is specified and quantified. Without clear and unambiguous quantification (e.g. in terms of number of hours or sessions a week) children lack the legal entitlement to provision which the law intended them to have . . . ”
“The provisions set out in the subsection should normally be specific, detailed and quantified (in terms, for example, of hours of ancillary or specialist teaching support) although there will be cases where some flexibility should be retained in order to meet the changing special educational needs of the child concerned.”
“LEAs are required to be specific about provision. Provision should normally be quantified, for example in terms of hours and frequency of support, but there are times when some flexibility needs to be retained either to meet the changing needs of the child or to allow for appropriate and alternative responses from within the school to reflect particular class or school arrangements. If the provision is not quantified, the detail must still be such that it is clear to parents and professionals what will be delivered and by what mechanism.”
"I am bound to say, although I have heard no detailed argument, that if in any particular case a statement of special educational needs lacked specificity and quantification where the changing needs of the child did not require it, reliance by an LEA or the Tribunal upon this particular paragraph of the Toolkit would be likely to be of little avail."
“LEAs will always need to specify provision but they will need to consider whether there are times when it would be inappropriate to provide further detail or quantify provision when a child is placed in a special school or specially resourced provision in a mainstream school which is funded by the LEA but provided by the school. In such settings there is a wide range and availability of specialist help and facilities on site with specific support and equipment provided by the school and teaching and learning programmes that can be varied day-to-day as required by the individual pupil. Such resources can therefore be managed flexibly to meet the child's changing needs. There will be times when a particular pupil regularly requires resources additional to those generally available and these will need to be set out in more detail.”
“Schools and LEAs will need to make decisions about the interventions and provision appropriate to each pupil on an individual basis. This can sometimes only be done by a careful assessment of the pupil's difficulties in the school and classroom context. It may therefore sometimes be inappropriate to quantify in advance the action that might be taken in terms of how much individual tuition a pupil might need, or how many hours of in-class support may be necessary, or what size of teaching group may be most appropriate.”