The government’s plans to support SEND pupils using ‘experts at hand’ cannot rely on luring back “burned out” professionals to work in schools, a panel of experts has warned.
An event organised by the Sutton Trust, chaired by its chief executive Nick Harrison, to debate the proposals outlined in the recently-published Schools White Paper, heard concerns about how the government planned to recruit the workforce, where they would come from and the time it might take to train them to be ready to support pupils and schools.
The government is currently consulting on its SEND reforms, following the publication of the Schools White Paper last month.
The “experts at hand” initiative, costing £1.8 billion over the next three years, is aimed at providing specialist support for children with SEND allowing most of them to be educated in an inclusive environment in mainstream schools.
I’m wary of a war cry that gets people back into a public sector that likely damaged their mental health and burned them out
The event also discussed it’s latest research into the double disadvantage of poverty and SEND, and how schools actively discourage applications from some families.
A new resource
Alistair Strathern MP, Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Treasury, said the government’s workforce strategy would play an important part in providing key healthcare professionals to work alongside schools, including educational psychologists and speech and language therapists.
He said it was unlikely that all the specialists needed could be trained from scratch which meant “bringing professionals back on board and back on side of the system, making sure they’re spending their time in school, supporting young people with their needs”.
Strathern said: “It’s important to start from the perspective that in most cases this is a resource that schools don’t have now.
“So it will be, even in an imperfect world where we haven’t got the workforce as fully sorted as we’d like to, a step forward on the offer for many schools in terms of that specialist support, which has been completely hollowed out both by the bureaucratic nightmare that the assessment system has become, but also the burn-out that far too many of those professionals who have been engaging and supporting young people for a very long time.
He added: “In terms of consequences for schools it’s about making sure you’ve got the right systems, approached inclusion guidance in place to ensure that they’re supported to help deploy that resource as effectively as possible.”
Krissy Yates, professional development specialist and SEND inclusion expert, said she believed that schools would welcome any additional resources offered.
Feeling valued
“There are many highly trained people around, and they could be an incredible workforce,” she said. “Educational psychologists are a really good example, and these are people who hold doctorate qualifications and spent ten years in training.
“Maybe we need to look at how much they are paid and ensure that they feel valued.
“But we also really need to invest in the teachers who are in the classroom and to value them to make sure they are looked after and treated well.”
Charlotte O’Regan, senior schools engagement manager with the Sutton Trust, said the success of the government plans depended on an “adequate workforce”.
But she added: “We have three ex-teachers out of four people on this panel and I’m really wary of any narrative that says we should be having a war cry that gets people back into a public sector that likely damaged their mental health and burned them out.
“So, yes, absolutely, we should be getting people into the workforce, and that is the best thing we can do for the children.
“But we really need to understand why those people left and stop asking them to put the wellbeing of children above themselves.”
