As the social historian RH Tawney reminded us in the first half of the twentieth century, ‘what a wise parent would wish for their children, the state should wish for all its children’.
For many, this has become a debate about those children labelled as having special needs and disabilities (SEND).
But, in truth, for many of us it’s about something more fundamental: what kind of society are we shaping for the future and how should our state education system pave the way for provision which helps all children to thrive, achieve and belong?
Because for far too many, that’s not what it feels like just now.
That’s why, I have chaired the independent taskforce on inclusion for the Public Policy Reform (IPPR) – listening to youngsters, parents, teachers and experts on what truly inclusive education looks like.
Today, we have set out principles we believe would enable the government to build a system that achieves excellence with equity.
We’ve been driven by the UNESCO principle that “every learner matters and matters equally”. Shamefully, this simply isn’t the case for too many young people in England.
Early support for young people who need it is key. Be it through teaching methods, additional resources, or specialist professional support (such as speech and language experts).
There is real appetite to do this. Leaders come into education to provide high quality opportunities for learning, but also to develop a sense of personal potential and ensure youngsters are prepared to take a place in society as a productive citizen. And this should be irrespective of their background.
It’s what the wise parent would want. It’s what our state education system should have as its moral mission.
But far too many education leaders and teachers know just how challenging this is in practice.
Parents with children who need extra support too often feel that they must go into adversarial mode to obtain the kind of quality education that should be a basic entitlement (and this doesn’t involve young people being put in a taxi twice a day and travelling an hour from home to access the specialist education they need).
Local schools and trusts are hamstrung by a funding system that leaves them needing to go cap in hand to councils for every scrap of extra support.
And too many SEND children and their parents currently feel that they’re on the margins of policy and provision. We need to give them a sense that they belong, that they matter.
The recent education select committee gave us some good starting points, and the Department for Education has made some promising first steps.
The reformulation of initial teacher training from this year is a good start, and the education secretary has been clear she is working on more in this space, so every teacher and leader is genuinely equipped to meet the needs of a wider range of children in their classrooms. But this must be supported with appropriate resources and additional expertise where needed.
We’re seeing confidence being put in schools and trusts in their localities, moving away from the slow-to implement free school projects, thereby upgrading the mainstream school estate with adaptable spaces that meet a wider range of SEND needs.
But all of this is happening too slowly.
And too often the story from parents is the same, a wonderful inclusive primary school, followed by the transition to secondary where despite the best will of the teachers and leaders, the school doesn’t have the space and equipment they need.
This could be corridors now wide enough for wheelchairs, no bases for smaller group teaching, or lack of access to multi-disciplinary experts such as speech and language therapists and child psychologists.
In the absence of a clear policy direction, swirling speculation has been doing the rounds that the real government agenda is to scrap education health and care plans (EHCPs).
Many, many parents have told me of their frustration with the EHCP process … but also their frustration that an EHCP in itself proves no guarantee of educational quality for their child.
We can’t ignore that EHCPs are not functioning effectively on behalf of too many children.
We must do better than have this emotionally-exhausting and labyrinthine system for supporting the majority of SEND children.
It shouldn’t need to be a battle. That was the mood too in the shadow of world war one when RH Tawney was arguing that the nation must do better for all of its young people.
And that’s what we have tried to do in the principles set out in our IPPR report:
- To see a more inclusive education system as the stepping-stone to a more inclusive society
- To give children and young people the additional support they need sooner in their lives and closer to where they live
- To develop the skills of the whole workforce locally to help young people overcome barriers to learning
- To develop an accountability system which incentivises a shared, locally-based approach to supporting young people
- And to recognise that all of this takes time – so it’s not about suddenly withdrawing education health and care plans (EHCPs) from children: it’s about resetting our education system so that inclusion is at its heart.
Now is the opportunity for a once-in-a-generation reset moment of how our education system shapes the values of the kind of society we wish to be.
Which, surely, is what the wise parent would want.
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