We are, as vicars like to tell us, all special in our own way. But none so much as children in Scottish primary schools, 43 per cent of whom are classified as having special needs. This can entitle them to extra tuition and, when they are older, extra time in exams.
The expansion of Send is diverting resources from genuine special needs pupils as well as from classrooms in general
If ever we needed more evidence that special educational needs and disabilities (Send) is a runaway juggernaut that is bringing the education system to its knees, this is it. Children are routinely being made out to be disabled in some way – either because their schools want more money or because their sharp-elbowed parents want them to have some advantage.
I am no stranger to special needs education. My daughter, who is now an adult, attended special schools. But I can tell a racket when I see it – and this is one. You only have to spend a few minutes with my daughter to realise why she could never have sat in a classroom with ‘normal’ pupils. She has severe learning disabilities which will preclude her ever from leading an independent life. She operates around the level of a three- or four-year-old child and always will. That is why she had to attend a special school, expensive as it is, because of its much higher teacher-to-pupil ratio.
Do I think that 43 per cent of Scottish schoolchildren remotely fall into a category where they need some kind of extra help because they cannot be expected to function in a normal classroom setting? Sorry, but no.
Send is mushrooming because too many people have a vested interest in it. Besides schools in search of extra funding and parents wanting their children to get some extra private tuition on the taxpayer, an industry of private special schools has emerged to extract vast sums from the taxpayer. It costs an average of £23,900 to educate a child in a state special school such as the one my daughter attended, but £61,500 in a private special school. And no, it is not because the needs of the latter are greater. My daughter’s school had many children with severe autism and several children with ‘profound and multiple disabilities’ – the highest level of need you can get. Private special schools – many of which specialise in the fashionable diagnosis of the day, autism – charge so much because they can get away with it. It is often not parents who are paying these fees, but councils. If a child has an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) which stipulates he or she must attend a certain school, the council has no option but to cough up.
But it is breaking the bank. In England, the proportion of Send pupils is only half that of Scotland – at 19.5 per cent. Nevertheless, the cost of supporting Send children has soared by two thirds in real terms in the past decade, to £13.1 billion. This year alone the bill is forecast to soar by another 13 per cent. The proportion of children with EHCPs – a subset of Send pupils with higher needs – has risen from 3 per cent to 5 per cent in the past ten years.
Moreover, many of these pupils are being conveyed to school not in a minibus with other special needs pupils – as my daughter was – but in personal taxis. It is sucking resources out of the education system, with councils and schools spending £2.26 billion on Send transport last year.
When all children are special, no children are. The massive expansion of Send is diverting resources from genuine special needs pupils as well as from classrooms in general. And before the Scottish government tries to make out that its enthusiastic designation of Send pupils has helped identify children with dyslexia, ‘information processing’ and other mild learning disorders to give them vital extra help, let’s just remember Scotland’s Pisa scores, which measure maths, science and reading. In the mid-2000s, Scotland’s education system was the best in the United Kingdom. Since then it has taken a serious dive, with scores in maths and science falling more sharply than any other constituent country of the UK (although Wales is still bottom). The racket in Send is helping enrich some, but it isn’t helping raise educational attainment.
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