The appointment of Sir Kevan Collins as a non-executive board member at the Department for Education was a welcome announcement this week.

Yet contained within the same DfE press release was the even more welcome news - at least from a special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and inclusion perspective - of a restructuring to place responsibility for SEND and alternative provision (AP) within the DfE’s schools group.

In the past, responsibility sat within the children and families brief. This caused a high risk of “othering” when it came to SEND policy, ironically mirroring the experience of SEND children, as decisions around SEND were too often made in isolation from core education policy.

A positive step

As such, this change is a positive step towards removing silos in policymaking for all children in education. For too long, we have had a culture of categorising children with SEND and inadvertently placing limitations on their progress.

Attempts to change this have felt like rearguard actions, such as using the phrase “including those children with SEND” in policy documents. We need to make bigger strides than this if we are to take inclusion seriously.

One of the effects of this separatist culture is that other areas of education policy can inadvertently create disincentives to inclusion.

Including SEND from the start

Let’s take the example of curriculum, which is particularly pertinent as the new government has committed to a review of curriculum and assessment.

Too often, decisions about curriculum and assessment are being made without pupils with SEND in mind. ASCL suggests the needs of learners with SEND should be made explicit in the principles of Labour’s review.

The same goes for Ofsted reform, where Labour is proposing a report-card model.

That new model should have a strong focus on provision and progress of pupils with SEND, such as standards around the strategic role of the Sendco, inclusive admissions, curriculum accessibility and extracurricular provision.

It’s increasingly clear that, if the improvements to provision laid out in the SEND and AP improvement plan are to come to pass, disincentives to inclusion must first be addressed.

This is surely going to be easier to achieve when the same team is responsible for both school policy and equitable provision.

Every policy is a SEND policy

We’re now at the point where one in five children in every classroom in England has an identified need.

This is not a niche issue that can be worked through in silos - it has to be central to every policy area in education.

We need SEND to be considered intrinsic to attendance, behaviour, assessment, curriculum and mental health. Inclusion means considering all children in every decision we make about education.

There needs a be a built-in model of SEND provision affecting all teams, individuals and strategy areas that we use within schools.

The mantra that every teacher is a teacher of SEND and every leader is a leader of SEND is key to a whole-school approach, as ASCL has argued for many years. It’s timely that the DfE is now doing the same.

Changing systems and mindsets

In fairness, civil servants have tried their best to operate a multi-disciplinary approach over the past few years, but structural limitations have meant this hasn’t been systematic. The hope is that a change in structure will make this approach easier to achieve.

The real challenge is to address the culture and build SEND into all aspects of education policy and practice - a first thought rather than an afterthought.

Of course, we can’t afford to lose the vital collaboration with responsibilities held by the children and families team, particularly working more closely with health and social care policymakers.

Ordinarily available provision, so topical now, is not the preserve of schools, it is a multi-disciplinary responsibility.

Listen to the experts

You will probably remember that Sir Kevan has worked for the DfE before.

He resigned as education recovery commissioner in protest at the previous government’s “half-hearted” catch-up plan, which he said did not do enough to help vulnerable pupils.

If it is going to be successful in its ambition of improving opportunities for children with SEND, you suspect the new government will need to be more receptive to what he has to say.

Margaret Mulholland is the special educational needs and inclusion specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders

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