Tory defector and former skills minister, Dame Andrea Jenkyns, is to lead a Reform UK working group on SEND, which will report in the new year.
Among the options being considered by the party is using redundant churches to house education provision for pupils with special needs, to remove the need to use expensive independent schools and keep children closer to home.
The party’s deputy leader, Richard Tice (pictured), hosted a press conference to announce the moves, during which he apologised for comments he made about SEND children last month.
At that event, Tice said there was a “crisis of overdiagnosis” and that the sight of children wearing ear defenders in school was “insane”, sparking outrage and criticism.
But he adopted a different approach this week. He said: “Everybody is unhappy, frustrated, angry, furious about what is going on within the SEND system. Parents feel they are battling. They are fighting a system that does not work for their children.”
Different ways of doing things
He said that the SEND system was “completely broken” and that “some people are afraid, but we musn’t be afraid – we must be bold and embrace this”.
Tice said: “Imagine a system where children don’t have to travel in a taxi every day 60 to 90 minutes to a specialist school.
“Imagine having a specialist school in rural areas within two or three villages away. Imagine, for example, using redundant churches five days a week that are currently only used one day a week.
“Imagine specialist schools for differently abled children using those churches, reopening churches that have, indeed, been made redundant.”
On the cost of state pupils with SEND going to independent special schools, Tice said: “There’s about 100 new specialist schools set up every year, all of them private equity-funded, almost without exception. I think we can do things differently.”
Jenkyns, who is mayor of Greater Lincolnshire and had admitted she has ADHD, will lead a working group made up of experts and Reform UK councillors, and plans to publish an interim report to coincide with the government’s delayed white paper.
Asked whether he wanted to see for-profit organisations leaving the sector, Tice said Reform thought profit was “a good thing” but that there might be “different ways of doing it”.
