The Labour government must end the “arms race...created for parents” of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and fix the system as a “priority”, multi-academy trust leaders have said.
The chief executive of Ark Schools Lucy Heller described the current system as “absurd” with parents feeling that they have to “fight” to get support.
Speaking at the Festival of Education, Ms Heller said: “We have to radically reform the special needs structure...And we need to end the effective arms race that we’ve created for parents where they feel to get the support that their child needs, they have to go and sort of fight for it.”
Last year, the former education secretary Gillian Keegan described the SEND system as “lose-lose”, amid widespread dissatisfaction.
On Friday, the Labour Party was elected to form the next government. In the party’s manifesto, Labour said it would “take a community-wide approach, improving inclusivity and expertise in mainstream schools, as well as ensuring special schools cater to those with the most complex needs”.
SEND reform will take a ‘decade’
Speaking on a different panel at the festival, the chief executive of Ormiston Academies Trust - which has 42 schools across the country - Tom Rees said that there has to be “a level of attention on the SEND system that we haven’t had in 10 years”.
And Mr Rees said that he expects that the SEND reform that is needed will take around a decade.
The MAT CEO also added that the sector needed to become far better at “how we provide targeted and specialist support...The government needs to set about this quite early [and] make it a priority.”
However, he added that there has been “some positive reform in the system” and it was important not to “spend a lot of energy looking back”.
Last month, government figures revealed that the number of pupils and young people with education, health and care plans (EHCPs) had seen the biggest rise since the pandemic, rising above 575,000.
Leaders have said that a rise in EHCPs and spiralling backlogs since Covid-19 have stretched the sector “to breaking point”.
Mr Rees also said that the sector had “fallen into a system” where “we’ve got a lot of [SEND] labels which don’t have an impact”.
Speaking on another panel at the same event, Mr Rees said that despite a huge increase in government spend on SEND, “it’s got no better outcomes for anyone who’s involved in it”.
Paul James, CEO of River Learning Trust, which has 28 schools in the South East, told the festival he wants the government to provide more incentives for trusts to open SEN units within mainstream schools.
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