The whole education sector is poised in anticipation for what the new government may bring, and nowhere more so than in SEND. Teachers, parents, young people and local authorities are vying for attention, eager to voice the changes they desperately need.
The recent parliamentary debate on the SEND crisis was as well-attended as it was passionate. MPs jostled to share their constituents’ experiences of a broken system in desperate need of reform: backlogs, understaffed schools and decimated services.
Amid the points made in parliament, Richard Burgon MP referenced an open letter from the Association of Educational Psychologists to Bridget Phillipson – a letter to which we are both signatories.
This is an exciting time. However, what we don’t need is an excited and excitable response; we need coherence.
As educational psychologists, we have front-row seats to the SEND crisis. We have daily contact with people at the heart of the system – children, young people and their families, teachers, TAs, heads and SENDCos. We work with LA statutory assessment teams, health professionals, paediatricians and GPs who feed into SEND work and with colleagues in social care
The issues each of these groups face are interlinked, born from systemic pressures and legal frameworks that work in contradiction to each other, some pushing while others pull, and all serving to tie knots around our most vulnerable learners.
As an example, the crisis in behaviour is not a standalone phenomenon but inextricably linked to the curriculum, the legacy of austerity (individual, school and societal) and school performance measures among many other factors.
Equally, the crisis in teacher recruitment and retention cannot be helpfully understood in isolation from these factors and more, alongside the inevitable stress caused by a lack of professional autonomy and the expectation of showing progress without the support required to do so.
There must be an end to the culture of blame
Nor, crucially, can the SEND crisis. Indeed, if these endemically stuck and escalating situations are to be addressed, it is imperative to look upstream and to begin to disentangle the mass of issues that surrounds our education system.
Conflicting policies, pressures and frameworks need to be clearly identified and addressed. Without coherence across the system at a higher level, these issues will continue to exist. They may have different names or presentations, but their devastating impacts on children, young people, families and education professionals will be the same.
Therefore, we urge the new government to ensure that there is coherence between the systems. Existing frameworks that grind against each other must be aligned, and future policies and frameworks must be carefully considered so that they are consistent with existing legislation. To aid this, ministers leading in different areas of education must work together rather than in silos, as has so often been the case.
Within all of this, the needs of those children and young people who require something additional or different in order to access education must be placed at the heart of policy development (curriculum, school performance, place planning and admissions, behaviour and mental health). They must no longer be an afterthought.
Children and young people are voting with their feet. Attendance is at an all time low, persistent and severe absence figures continue to increase and behavioural incidents are rising.
We must listen to what they are telling us they want and need: schools that are enabled and encouraged to provide safe, welcoming communities where they feel valued and like they truly belong.
High standards must no longer be framed as inconsistent with the flexibility required for inclusive education; these are not mutually exclusive aspirations. Vocational learning opportunities, teaching of skills that will prepare young people for adulthood and the holistic development of young people should all be afforded the same value as academic attainment.
And there must be an end to the culture of blame – blaming LAs, schools, parents and, worst of all, blaming children and young people themselves. Such blame inevitably arises from conflicting pressures and systems.
Instead, what we need is a collaborative, united voice for a fundamental recalibration of the system and the development of an integrated approach that allows all children to exercise their right to an education and to access schools alongside their peers in their local communities.
And while we’re at it, we also need to stop talking about ‘SEND children’ as if they are one homogenous group.
The whole sector is poised, not just for government action, but to play their part in developing the alternative – and none more so than educational psychologists.
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