It was the global expert on inclusion – Professor Mel Ainscow – who pointed out to me what a terrible word ‘SEND’ is.
“Send them where?” he asked.
It’s a reminder of how fraught and fractious our education system is when it comes to young people who may need various levels of additional support to help them in their journey to become successful citizens.
The children who should most feel that they belong in their communities are instead led to feel that they have to go elsewhere.
There’s an increasing feeling that our education system starts with a deficit model – what these children and young people lack, and then where they need to go for specialist help.
Well, it really doesn’t need to be like this.
A couple of months ago I was asked if I would chair a taskforce for the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). They are a UK-based progressive think tank founded in 1988 to generate ideas to help shape a fairer and more prosperous society.
What’s not to like about that – especially when it comes to educating young people with a variety of special needs?
Here’s why it matters.
Reforming a deeply adversarial system
One in five children are now identified with special educational needs, equivalent to six children in every classroom. Support for the most complex types of needs – delivered through Education Health and Care Plans – has doubled since 2014.
Most importantly, children with special educational needs continue to have poor outcomes; the system is deeply adversarial for families; and it often proves impractical.
So now is our moment to change all of that. And, in truth, this isn’t about SEND or inclusion. It’s about how we believe our society should educate all young people in order to take their place as future citizens.
So, what is our IPPR taskforce aiming to do?
Well, first, we’re not writing government policy. That’s for the government to do. We’re not developing new research, as there’s a ton of evidence around what isn’t working.
Instead, we’re setting out a few principles for the reform of the current system – why this matters, what works, what doesn’t, and what a government committed to social justice should be thinking about.
Consensus for change
We want to demonstrate that there is a genuine consensus for change – from young people themselves, from far too many weary and alienated parents, and from the people in our schools, trusts and colleges, who want to be able to deliver the inclusive education that so many of them came into the profession to try to achieve.
So, as a taskforce we are doing three things.
The group itself consists of some people who are SEND exerts and others who represent various constituencies – parents, leaders, LAs, and more.
But we’re also bringing together expert panels who know the education system as it is now and who can advise on how it could work better for a much bigger range of young people – experts for example in parenting and funding. Their insights, and their recommendations for reform, are essential in helping us to set out principles for potential government reform.
This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make our education system fairer and genuinely more inclusive.
And there’s one other thing we’re doing.
Too often it feels to me that we talk about inclusion and SEND reform in a clanging echo-chamber of educationists. But, frankly, this issue is much wider. It’s about how we as a society educate our young people and create the society that lies ahead.
So we’ve recorded a series of ‘Talking Inclusion’ podcasts, curated by the IPPR, which help to tackle some of the bigger issues (for example, are we over-labelling and over-medicalising children?) is a way which illuminates contentious issues calmly and rationally.
That’s what our IPPR taskforce is trying to achieve.
Then it will be over to the government. Our hope is that they recognise that the status quo is unsustainable. It isn’t working well enough for children, or parents, or taxpayers.
A sense of belonging
Planned, staged reform could take our generally good education system in England and make it work for far more young people, giving them access to a high-quality curriculum, high standards of teaching, and reinforcing the sense that they genuinely belong in their communities.
So, the stakes are high, but so is the consensus on the need for change. Many of us believe that this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make our education system fairer and genuinely more inclusive.
On behalf of so many young people and their parents, we’re going to need our political leaders and backbench Labour MPs to be ambitious and resolute and bold.
