The government’s inclusion tsar has said he would like to see the term SEND “retired” as he spoke of problems with the current “medicalised model” for special educational needs and disabilities.
Tom Rees, Ormiston Academies Trust’s CEO and chair of the DfE’s expert advisory group for inclusion, highlighted issues with categorising pupils under the “umbrella term”.
He told journalists at the ASCL conference today he would “like to see a world where you can retire the label of SEND, because we’ve become much more precise in our understanding of different needs, and this sort of generic label that we use at the moment would be redundant”.
He said it was “hard to see how you might go from where we are today to there”.
But he said he would like to reach that point in the next decade, and to have “a more expert school system that had less reliance on that label”.
‘Medicalised model’ of SEND is a ‘problem’
Rees said the word SEND led to certain needs that are “predictable and normal” – such as speech and language needs, which is the most common type of need for those receiving SEN support – being treated as “exceptional”.
He added that the current “medicalised model” of SEND “seeks to sort of do what medicine does”.
“Which is almost to categorise, identify need, with the idea that there’s a treatment or there’s something that you could prescribe,” he said.
“In an education setting and a broader society, there’s problems with that.”
Children with SEND ‘not a homogenous group’
In his keynote address on Saturday, Rees also highlighted issues with categorising pupils under the “umbrella term” of SEND.
“Underneath it are lots of different needs,” he said. “We often for shorthand use SEND as a way of grouping children, but it’s not a homogenous group…in that group there’s so much variety.”
The education system must move away “from thinking about SEND as something separate” and instead make it something that is focused on and embedded into the entire education system, with good provision built into “the core of mainstream schools”.
Demand for SEND support has soared in recent years.
The National Audit Office (NAO) says that between 2015 and 2024 there was a 140 per cent increase in children and young people with an education, health and care plan (EHCP).
As of last January there were 434,354 pupils in schools in England with an EHCP, 4.8 per cent of the pupil population. A further 1.2 million receive SEN support, around 13.6% of all pupils.
“It’s too big a number to deal with through individualised…specialist support,’ said Rees,
He spoke firmly as he described the EHCP-based SEND system as “bad”. “I think we need to acknowledge that and just say it,” he said. “It’s a bad system.”
‘We’ve got a badly-designed system’
Asked whether he believes the threshold for EHCPs should be lowered, Rees said the focus of his advisory group, which was launched late last year, “is more about how we can build that provision into the core of mainstream schools”.
Pressed further, he said: “I think we’ve got a badly designed system…I think that’s why [the] secretary of state’s right to say we need to step back and look at the whole system and to take our time to do it.”
Rees’s speech coincided with the launch of the government’s ‘Inclusion in Practice’ project, which aims to “identify and share practical, scalable solutions for inclusion in mainstream schools”.
The six-week call for evidence began on Saturday. “We’re hoping it will capture examples of good practice in the system,” said Rees.
The biggest problem is red tape& late intervention. Yes categorising under SEND has its own fare share of problems ( ie labelling) however it is also a big challenge to try and deal with common problems presented by the different children in a classroom set up without the necessary support.
Furthermore issues are picked up very early and flagged up,unfortunately it takes a very long time to establish interventions hence the red tape….And as such many children are let down. Some interventions are approved or become effective after even 2-3 years. How then does that help the child when possibly they would have got worse( depending with their challenge).
What bs lables help get support they want to shut people out from getting support because they can’t afford to provide proper support! Especially as they are trying to close send schools… this is ridiculous and shows they have no idea what they are talking about these kids struggles and the pretending it’s anything other than cost cutting and pretending its for anyone’s benefits when it’s in order to remove help is just deeply disturbing
If we set up nurseries, pre-schools, primaries and secondaries to all be inclusive from day 1 then children would be less likely to see difference as anything other than absolutely fine!
When adults get involved it seems that’s when difference becomes an issue.
Would it be so bad if we started making all school work on cream paper for example, or having visual prompts alongside words? Neurotypical people wouldn’t suffer and neurodivergent people would have a much better chance of moving forward earlier.
(I know I am making it sound basic but in principle why can’t we just be inclusive all rounders?)
A lot of children just can’t fit in the same box as everyone else no matter how you decorate that box on the inside. There is already a detrimental obsession on trying to force SEND children to fit into mainstream schools. Increasing this will just fail the most vulnerable even further. You will see increased levels of mental health problems and EBSA.
I absolutely agree that there is a major problem with the whole of the Special Educational Needs way of assessing and supporting. It is seriously flawed. It is so complex and demanding taking children out of lessons for numerous interventions which are not necessarily for their benefit, especially as they get older. It has become a system that tries to meet every conceivable need of a child. School has become a place for all sorts of therapies instead of focusing on the educational basics which children require. I fear that the result is that fewer children are leaving primary school with a basic ability to read and write despite all the emphasis on meeting children’s educational needs. Educational has lost its way if the children don’t know the basics.