Former schools minister Nick Gibb said today “we have let down thousands” of children with special needs.
Gibb, speaking at the BETT conference, said while some children with SEND flourished in mainstream classrooms, there are “still too many children for whom either mainstream education isn’t appropriate for their needs. Or the school simply doesn’t have the expertise and experience” to provide for those children.
“I believe that there are some children who need a very specialist approach to how they’re taught because of their special needs, and I think we have let down thousands of those children in the way that we teach them in our schools,” he added.
“I believe in inclusion, but I also believe that the specialist nature of special education does require special schools.
“From those special schools comes the expertise that can also then be fed back into mainstream schools to make sure that where children are in mainstream education, they get that specialist knowledge in how they are taught.”
However, he did say more special schools were created through the academies programme to “try and enhance that special education needs expertise in those schools”.
Baroness Mary Bousted, the former general secretary of the National Education Union who was also on the panel, said teachers too often feel they have children in their class where they “can’t meet the needs and the support is therefore not available”.
She told the conference she spoke to a teacher who was told by her local authority that, despite one children in her class being non-verbal and another “who can’t manage personal care”, that the children “had not tried for long enough” in mainstream school.
‘Overmedicalised diagnosis’
Bousted said the other problem in SEND was that “we have overmedicialised the diagnosis. So parents and children with SEN in schools, their child is not getting the support they need… It’s become a system built on collision rather than cooperation and collaboration.”
Bridget Phillipson has been clear that making mainstream schools more inclusive is one of her department’s key aims, as it seeks to tackle the ongoing SEND crisis.
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 (to 576,000) in children with an EHCP alone.
But outcomes have stagnated, and NAO called for “whole-system” reforms.
Meanwhile DfE figures in March revealed there were approximately 4,000 more pupils on roll in special schools than there was reportedly capacity for, with around two-thirds of special schools full or over-subscribed.
Former education secretary Gillian Keegan previously said the current system is “lose, lose, lose”, costing a “fortune” and not providing the “right service”, the education secretary has admitted.
Ofsted is also placing a focus on inclusion, which is expected to be a key criterion in its new report cards, due to launch in September.
Bousted pointed to Germany as an example of best practice. “They look to have smaller classes. They’ve got a more flexible workforce. We need to start looking at those solutions.”
Robert Halfon, a former minister for skills, apprenticeships and higher education, said there was a “postcode lottery” in councils and the quality of service for SEND children.
“I’ve always felt it was those parents who know how to lobby their MPs, who know how to use the system, or may have contacts elsewhere, who get the best care for their child, compared to parents not from these backgrounds who may not know these things or have that kind of access.”
