Kent SEND APP Rory Love video transcript

Transcript video for Rory Love, Cabinet Member for Education and Skills interview.

[Title card: Kent’s SEND Improvements - Rory Love, Cabinet Member for Education and Skills]

Interviewer:

So I am here with Rory Love, who is Cabinet Member for Education and SKills at Kent County Council and we're here to talk about the Improvement Plan. Rory, we've had some questions direct from PACT (Parents and Carers Together) and I'm here to put these to you now.

The first thing they would like to know is 'When are you going to stop evaluating, communicating, planning and running focus groups and get on with making things better?'.

Rory Love;

"The first thing I would like to say is that I am really pleased you've had some questions direct from Kent PACT. Kent PACT are really valuable partners in our improvement journey and we can't do this without them, and I am looking forward to being able to answer some of their questions both here and going on in the future. You ask when we're getting on with it, do you know, we already are. Of course we're doing the evaluation, we're doing the assessment, we're doing the communications, but we're also getting on with the job. We're not letting that get in the way of actually making the improvements that we need to make."

Interviewer

"Parents also want to know how you're going to make schools hold account to ensure they're treating SEN children fairly and being inclusive without discrimination?"

Rory Love:

"Well, the first thing is clearly, I can't hold schools to account. Schools will make their own judgement about things, but what I can say is that from a strategic level, I've just changed our CATIE document, which is the county wide approach to inclusive education from just being a set of guidelines, to being a formal council strategy. What that means is that we've got great leverage to work with the partners, our partner in schools, to make sure that more schools are able to come online and be more inclusive and adopt some inclusive practices. We know that most schools are already there, but there are one or two where we need to do a little bit more work, and that's what we're doing.

Interviewer

"And I think they also want to know why they should believe you this time, and that you will actually implement an effective improvement plan this time around?"

Rory Love;

"Well, the first thing is I'd say that I'm not just asking people to believe me. We've set up a baord to oversee all of the work we're doing that's independently chaired, and that's a crucial thing. If parents thought that I was judging what I'm doing, then I'd quite understand why some might say, 'well, hang on a moment, I'm not sure that I believe him because he's marking his own homework'. Well, we're not, what we've done is to set up this independent board to oversee the work both by the county council but also by our partners in health and education, and that's independently chaired. So that brings a degree of objectivity to it. But look, the key thing is here, it's nothing that I can say, that's going to make people believe me. It's when they see the improvements that I'm starting to bring about. I think that's when parents will make their own judgement and they'll come back to us, if they don't think we're quite there yet, but I think they will start to see that very soon indeed.

[Closing captions on screen/voiceover] To find out more visit www.kent.gov.uk/send.