Mar 26, 2025, Daily Echo: Vikki Slade backs Lib Dem plan to overhaul SEND education
VIKKI Slade MP has backed her party’s plan to improve education for children with special educational needs.
The Lib Dem MP for Mid Dorset & North Poole supported the new rescue plan for the SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) system at the party’s Spring Conference in Harrogate, saying that “families deserve far better.”
The motion, which was approved by members, includes policies to improve inclusion for SEND students in mainstream schools, such as mandatory SEND training for all teachers and education professionals.
This was a point Slade raised in Parliament last November when she challenged the Secretary of State for Education on what was being done to ensure teacher training was meeting children’s needs, given that most teachers have had no more than half a day’s training on autism.
Ms Slade said: “I have received too many cases where parents and carers have contacted me because the current SEND system is failing them.
“Many families are being forced to home-educate or their children are on part-time timetables in mainstream because the school system does not have adequate space,
resourcing and staffing to meet the needs of their children. This is having an untold impact on these young people’s education and mental health and also that of their families.”
She added that council budgets had been “stretched beyond their limits” due to the “neglect of the last Conservative government.”
The Liberal Democrats are also calling for the acceleration of state-funded special needs schools to rapidly increase capacity. Currently, many children with special educational needs are unable to access the right education due to a widespread lack of provision. This often results in children travelling long distances to special schools or being placed in expensive private providers while council budgets remain stretched.
Ms Slade said: “We find ourselves in a position where families and local authorities are pitted against one another when the reality is that both find themselves in impossible positions with local authorities being forced to say no to desperate families because the spaces for their children just do not exist.
“Families deserve far better – which is why we’ve launched our new calls to fix the crisis.
“The Liberal Democrats will continue to carry the torch for children let down by government after government.”
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