Welcome to the Isle of Sheppey, a stretch of pebbled beaches and caravan parks that regularly stars in the ONS’s index of multiple deprivation. Health outcomes, like household incomes, are well below the national average: the life expectancy here is nine years lower for men and four years lower for women, while the rates of diabetes and obesity are higher.
At Thistle Hill Academy, a primary school in the northwest corner of the Isle, teachers have been contending admirably with their community’s challenges – including the news that 47 per cent of the Reception class they expect in September will have special education needs (SEND). High levels of SEND children is commonplace here and in schools across Kent. But this increase comes just as Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, threatens to reduce or even bin the education, health and care plans (EHCPs) that support 638,000 children and young people altogether.
Given almost 1.7 million children have SEND, their parents represent a significant protest vote
Children currently eligible for an EHCP get one-to-one assistance, specialist equipment, and speech and language therapy. Their special needs range widely, from a severe form of autism that drives the child to biting-and-kicking violence in the classroom to mild dyslexia that slows down their reading.
If Phillipson’s threat is realised, the impact on teachers will be ‘enormous’, Naomi Allchin, the special educational needs coordinator at the school, says:
It has become the norm to have non-verbal children in key stage 2, who need one-on-one speech and language sessions. It’s routine to have children coming into Reception who have no self-regulation or are still in nappies and with a dummy in their mouth. These children absorb the teacher’s attention – which leaves their classmates without.
Already, Naomi regularly accompanies parents with SEND children to their paediatricians’ and dentists appointments and helps them fill out the complicated forms they need for their EHCPs or housing benefits: ‘Many just cannot cope with the pressures of meeting their child’s needs, so we end up parenting the parents.’
Parents with children who cannot speak, or grow violent, or have experienced trauma will find little in the way of support in low-income communities. Many local authorities’ education budgets, and not just in the most deprived areas, struggle to provide for the increasing number of SEND children in their areas: in 2023-4, Kent spent £17 million on assessing and delivering EHCPs for 21,000 children – as well as an eye-watering £70 million to transport half of these children to and from school or medical appointments.
Critics question the stats: can it really be that 2 million youngsters under 25 need SEND support? How can conditions such as autism, ADHD and dyslexia have soared so that they require more than £10 billion of the country’s education budget?
Yet desperate parents counter the fact that progress in neuroscience has exposed what until very recently we conveniently ignored: diversity applies to our brain function, too. Many of the children who classify as ‘SEND’ have been folded into mainstream schools with success – where before, they would have been left adrift (and their parents in despair) by an inflexible education system that barred their entry.
But for many SEND children, ordinary life, including mainstream schools, is only possible with extra support. Their parents are keenly aware of the school’s role. While others fail to engage with their child’s school and have shrugged off their child’s regular school attendance as unnecessary, SEND parents are more likely to rely on schools for support.
‘They feel isolated,’ Victoria Nunn, CEO of The Inclusive Learning Partnership, a SEND-focused organisation, says. ‘For many, this is a 24/7 role with no support or respite.’ Forty per cent of parents with a SEND child will be unable to hold down a job because of their commitment to caring for their children.
School then becomes a hub of support: here they can meet parents in similar circumstances and share advice. Especially important for SEND families, they can also leverage their combined voices to demand practical changes like a shorter school day for a severely autistic child or a soft toy accompaniment for a traumatised toddler. School is also where their children may receive a short intervention, introduced early on and delivered in focused one-to-one or small group sessions: this can help to meet even severe needs at an early stage to transform a child’s life chances.
But this kind of intervention calls for funding that supports a timely assessment by a specialist, followed by a personalised programme delivered by a specially-trained member of staff. Victoria Nunn says this is no longer available: ‘Schools have had to reduce the staff that used to deliver these effective interventions. Now the only security schools and parents can have is that afforded by an ECHP.’
SEND parents have told Nunn that Phillipson’s ‘woolly talk’ has infuriated them: ‘There was no proper consultation taken before the threat to the ECHP became public, and parents who have battled the unjust process for years have been left angry and anxious.’
Given almost 1.7 million children have been diagnosed with SEND, their parents represent a not insignificant protest vote. The government angers them at its peril: after the humiliating debacle of their plans for welfare reform, do ministers really want to alienate another vulnerable group?
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