With the current pandemic, there has been a national move to get children back into school as quickly as possible to minimise any loss to their education and to foster healthy socialisation with their peers.

Almost as soon as schools closed to the majority, conversations were underway about when we would be able to reopen, and how we would continue to support our pupils. This is understandable.

School is vital for children, and all educational professionals would support the comment of schools minister Nick Gibb, who, back in 2016, stated that a report on the effect of absences on pupils in England and Wales showed “evidence that missing school for even a day can … have a damaging effect on their life chances”. 

Let’s just remember that quotation.

Coronavirus: SEND pupils left without school

The importance of school attendance is the government’s oft-repeated refrain. So why, then, are SEND children being left for months without school places?

At the same time that ministers are telling us that we simply must get the nation’s children back into school to avoid the catastrophic long-term damage that could be done to their life chances, we also face the reality of thousands of SEND children who have no appropriate school to attend. 

The government knows it, the local education authorities (LEAs) know it and headteachers know it.

If school is so critically important for the nation’s children, why doesn’t it include the nation’s SEND children, too? 

Could it be because of the hypocrisy that exists at the heart of Whitehall, that only neurotypical, and potentially the most economically successful, children are important? Too cynical? Maybe.

Perhaps it’s because the families of these children are so exhausted dealing with the day-to-day grind of keeping their heads above water and fighting for titbits from the LEAs’ table, they simply have no energy left to take on the Whitehall leviathan. 

And if they don’t say anything, then clearly it’s not a problem, is it? 

Financial shackles

I’m not entirely blaming LEAs here, although some will know they have to do better. 

There is a greater fiscal issue and that is how the government funds schools. 

The country has been dealing with the austerity politics of the past 10 years and schools have borne the brunt of this in terms of more children coming into the education system at the same time as funding in real terms per pupil has been reduced. 

As the Commons Education Committee Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Report in 2019 summarised, young people have been “let down” by poorly delivered and under-funded reforms: “There is too much of a tension between the child’s needs and the provision available. The significant funding shortfall is a serious contributory factor to the failure … to deliver on the SEND reforms and meet children’s needs.”

Children who find themselves without appropriate provision are often those who have complex situations. 

These are children who are shockingly vulnerable, not only to long term economic poverty, but also to self-harm and suicide. To substance misuse. To county lines criminal activity. To radicalisation. To predatory sexual grooming.

So, why is it not a recognised national disgrace that these young people are being abandoned to become the victims of tomorrow’s society? 

Hypocrisy in Whitehall

Let’s return to Nick Gibb’s quotation again: “Missing school for even a day can … have a damaging effect on their life chances.”

It would seem that he means all pupils, so why do I have a family whose SEND child has been out of school since mid-September with no offer of appropriate educational provision? 

Why has another SEND child only just been offered a placement after 18 months of no appropriate educational provision? 

Why do I have a SEND child with no appropriate educational secondary school to transfer to?

The government is so busy creating a moral panic about neurotypical children missing a few weeks of schooling that nobody is stopping to consider the thousands of SEND children who have no appropriate education at all.

What our children need is an education that meets their needs, and if mainstream schools aren’t suitable, then it is the government’s job to ensure that an alternative placement is made available.

Sadly, it’s clear that if you don’t really care about special needs children then you won’t fund their provision. If you don’t care about special needs families, then you won’t fund their support. 

If you simply work on short-term politics, short term gains are your goal. SEND children don’t fit this model. 

We need to plan, fund and deliver transformative education over a generation, not an election cycle. 

We need to recognise that the current underfunded system creates victims, not by accident but by design. 

We need to do better.

Debra Roscoe is the lead Sendco for a multi-academy trust in Berkshire