Dec 24, 2024, Guardian : ‘The worst it’s ever been’: teachers decry Send crisis in England’s schools
Staff and parents share their experience as number of pupils with special educational needs spirals
“The Send [Special educational needs and disabilities] system is broken: completely and irrevocably,” said David Wilson, a deputy headteacher at an inner-city Manchester primary school where there are between six and 10 children with Send in each classroom. “This impacts everyone – children with and without special needs.”
Wilson, who spent eight years of his career as a Senco [special educational needs coordinator], was among hundreds of people who shared their experience of SEN provision in the UK. Parents, teachers and Send specialists from across the country overwhelmingly agreed that things had become the worst they had ever been.
The number of children and young people entitled to government support in the form of education, health and care plans [EHCPs] is due to double to 1 million within a decade, a report found. The investigation by the National Audit Office (NAO) found that despite record levels of spending, there had been no signs of improvement in the lives of children with SEN.
Local authorities, the report further concluded, were being forced towards insolvency by rising demand for special school places and “high-needs” funding for specialists such as therapists, psychologists and teaching assistants.
Hundreds of teachers and parents of children with and without SEN told the Guardian that mainstream schools had no hope of providing adequate support for the growing number of children with increasingly complex special needs.
“There is a huge increase in social, emotional and mental health needs (SEMH) and subsequent dramatic increase in children disrupting their own learning and that of others,” Wilson said, echoing the remarks of many, including those of a deputy headteacher of a primary school in Nottingham who said the number of children with significant Send had “risen massively” over the past five years.
Their needs, this deputy added, were often now so complex that teaching assistants who once supported groups of children in each classroom now had to focus on the needs of a single child they had been assigned to.
Wilson said he and many of his colleagues believed that the main reasons for this sharp increase in SEMH were “Covid, Covid, Covid”.
“It had a devastating effect: children lacking social skills – the ability to turn-take, reciprocal play, sharing, resilience. They went from a low-demand environment to one where they’re expected to follow social norms, school rules, the rigour of the curriculum.
“In addition, I believe the stress put on teachers is transmitted to the children, and vice versa – a vicious self-perpetuating circle. Staff are exhausted dealing with constant crises. The energy expended by teachers on children with behavioural needs is not sustainable.”
Like hundreds of others, including parents, teachers and Send specialists, Wilson believes that the concept of inclusion – providing education to children with Send in a mainstream school setting rather than in a special school – is no longer working because of the explosion in pupils needing extra support.
Record amounts of funding for Send – with the bill for special needs education in England having hit £10bn [$12.6B] a year – “have been and are being wasted for a set of poor and damning outcomes”, he feels.
“We need to massively expand the number of specialist places. The government needs to listen to what teachers are reporting and fundamentally change the way we meet the needs of SEN children. It cannot be fixed on the cheap – or we’ll be having the same, tired old conversations in three, five or 10 years’ time.”
Wilson said waiting lists had spiralled, as had appeals made by parents whose children had been denied EHCPs, leaving “children unable to access what is legally theirs”.
Many parents said it had taken years of “battle” to get EHCPs for their children. Several parents said they had been forced to give up their jobs as their children had been denied EHCPs and could not attend school without one. . . .
Dozens of teachers shared this experience, saying there were simply too many children with EHCPs to look after, too few staff and not enough specialist training.
Various teachers said that children with EHCPs were increasingly often assigned agency teaching assistants who could leave at short notice in the middle of the school year, causing additional disruption.
Tom, the father of a son with autism from Bristol, said his son had been progressing well in a mainstream setting thanks to an EHCP and one-to-one support in school – “despite the obvious challenges the school has had in ensuring provision for him”. . . .
“Our Senco recently said: ‘In 20 years, it’s the worst it’s ever been.’ This is a national emergency affecting not just the most vulnerable children, but all children, their families, their communities. Labour must act immediately.”
Fiona, a teacher from London in her 50s, said: “Far too many children with Send are just dumped into mainstream lessons with little support.” . . .
Amanda, from Surrey, who had to give up work to care for her two children with autism, was one of many parents who described their children’s time in mainstream schools as traumatic. . . .
Like scores of other parents, Amanda highlighted diagnostic assessment waiting times of several years in her area, as well as attempts by her local authority to obstruct the issuing of EHCPs.
“The only way local authorities can save themselves some money is to delay [applications for Send support],” she said.
Various parents, teachers and staff from local authorities said the system was pitting the needs of individual children against endeavours by schools and authorities to invest in improvements of the state school sector, with many saying that funds spent on obtaining, implementing and reviewing EHCPs often did not yield desired outcomes. . . .
Another teacher working in the suburbs of the capital said the “inclusion illusion” meant that councils were at the mercy of tribunals demanding that needs must be met, regardless of financial deficits. . . .
A number of parents reported that they had been trying to obtain EHCPs in the hope that this would help with their children’s poor mental health, after they had been unable to get adequate NHS mental health support. . . .
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