Segregation or Integration – is that the question?

There is already a debate going on about SEND Education. A lot of the debate is, mistakenly, focussing on the cost of SEND Education rather than whether it currently meets the needs of those children and young people that it is meant to support.

We have seen newspaper headlines claiming that local authorities will have to declare themselves bankrupt because of the ever increasing cost of SEND. This is clearly nonsense and if local authorities feel the needs to declare themselves bankrupt then we need to look at local authority finances and financial management in detail. Scapegoating students with additional educational needs is not acceptable!

What is SEND?

SEND stands for Special Educational Needs which recognises that some children and students will need additional support to enable them to achieve their full potential. We should remember that extremely bright and intelligent children also need additional support to enable them to achieve their full potential.

This is not about ‘Special Treatment’ this is ‘Equal Treatment’ so that children and students with specific disabilities or impairments can fully engage in learning and education. In modern political terminology it is about ensuring that, as far as possible, all learners have a level playing field and are not excluded or disadvantaged either by their impairment or the ableist and discriminatory attitudes of others.

The Government are due to publish their proposals for SEND reform this week and the big fear is that these proposals will be driven by ‘cost cutting’ rather than identifying and meeting the needs of children and students.

One Size Fits All?

There appear to be two competing when it comes to SEND. The first is that children with special educational needs should be segregated from other children. The fear is that if they are integrated into mainstream schools that they will hold back the other students and this will prevent them from achieving their full potential.

The second idea is that all children with special educational needs should be integrated into mainstream schools which will enable those children to flourish and achieve something closer to their full potential whilst not detrimentally impacting on other children.

These, broadly, appear to be the two approached for the provision of SEND Education. I am no expert when it comes to SEND Education but is it really as simple as that? WE have two approached and we have to decide which approach is correct!

If we make the wrong choice then we could be writing off the life chances of many children with Special Education Needs.

The question is, does one size fit all?

Context

When we look at the current problems and challenges facing SEND we need to look at the overall picture.

One of the issues that has been discussed within some of the education trade unions is that the resources provided for producing Educational Statements (EHCPs), especially staffing, has been cut. The average time for an Educational Statement otherwise known as an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) to be produced has risen to about 18 months. So, if a child starts school at the age of 5 they could be in their third year of education when that educational statement is produced. Whether all the resources need to fully implement that statement have been identified and allocated is another matter.

We need to ensure that the EHCP is initiated before a child starts school, it could even be produced whilst they are still in nursery

In simple terms that child or student is going to be disadvantaged for at least the first 2 years of their education – a setback they may never recover from.

We are told that the Government proposals are suggesting that every child should be reassessed when they are due to move up to secondary school – are they going to commit the resources to ensure that these assessments are completed before the child starts at secondary school?

Let us put this in a slightly different context: if you started a new job and you required ‘reasonable adjustments’ or ‘’Specialist support’ to enable you to do that job but this would not be available for 2 years then, ask yourself, what is the likelihood that you would still be in that job after 2 years? The odds are that your employer would have targeted you for under performance and managed you out of the organisation because the employer had failed to provide you with the ‘reasonable adjustments’ that you required.

So the first point we need to address is the assessment of students with additional educational needs and how this process can be made more efficient so that Educational Statements are produced before the student or child starts at an educational establishment – school, college or university.

The second point to address is to agree how we identify and provide the resources required to support these Educational Statements (EHCP’s). Will this funding be provided nationally or locally?

The third issue is what will the educational structure look like for children and students with additional needs?

Do we integrate all children with special or additional educational needs into mainstream schools?

Do we segregate all children with special or additional educational needs into SEND schools and colleges? Would this in effect be a system of educational apartheid?

Do we integrate as many children and students with additional educational needs as possible into mainstream schools and look at alternative provision for the small number that may not be able to be integrated into mainstream schools?

Where children and students with additional educational needs are integrated into mainstream schools what will this look like?

Will it be like the early days of Comprehensive Schools where all the children who would have been expected to go to Grammar School were put in different classes to those children who would have been expected to go to Secondary School? Segregation by another name!

So how will we ensure that children with additional educational needs are fully integrated in mainstream schools?

Will integration mean that we need to have smaller class sizes? This would definitely benefit all the children, students and learners.

Will integration enable us to challenge the very ableist and discriminatory attitudes which seem to be embedded in our society?

We do need to have a proper debate and discussion about SEND Education but it must be needs based rather than cost driven.

How do we ensure that school staff are provided with better training to support children and young people with disabilities. Too often, teaching staff leave college or university without adequate preparation for supporting pupils with special educational needs

All our students with special or additional education needs should be fully supported and this support needs to continue when they move into the world of work.

Let me conclude this article with a quote from Daniel Kebede, General Secretary of the National Education Union, who said “Reforming SEND cannot be done on the cheap”

He went on to say “The crisis facing children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities has been years in the making. It is the direct result of political decisions that have removed resources, weakened local systems and left schools to cope with demands they were never funded to meet. Families have lived with this reality for a long time. Educators have lived with it too. And the government can no longer look away.”

I hope that we can all agree with Daniel Kebede when he says that "I welcome any reform rooted in children’s rights, inclusion and fairness"

Please let us know what you think, and tell us about your experiences, by putting your opinions in the Comments Box below this article

Understanding SEND Education - Easy Read Version by Carinder Malhi

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