More funding needed to Special Educational Needs

6th January, 2023

It’s been lovely to start the new year with visits to some of our local primary schools. But sadly the challenges they are facing seem to be worse than ever. Many raised with me repeatedly about the numbers of children who are placed in schools with additional needs that they really struggle to support. Frankly, there are too many children in mainstream that require specialist places but there simply isn’t the provision.

Today I’ve been with teachers who spoke to me about how difficult it is to teach children who aren’t toilet-trained, who aren’t capable of learning in a mainstream classroom. One parent contacted me a year ago whose child was in a similar situation, her child was struggling in school with sensory overload & the school were unable to meet his needs. This parent asked for my help to get him into a specialist school.

Her son has been diagnosed with autism and because he wasn’t getting the support he needed in his current school, he didn’t attend. I stepped in and helped the family obtain an EHC Plan for him but there was still a six-month battle to get the Local Authority to agree that he needed to be in a specialist school.

For those six months, her son didn’t attend school; it’s a deep irony of the system that the children who need the most support and education, too often get none at all. It took months of pushing to get a Tribunal date and once the family won the appeal, her son was placed in a Special school, one much more suited to meet his needs.

I’ve heard from the family this week and it’s wonderful to hear he is thriving at school now and has come on leaps and bounds.

I know that not all parents are as fortunate, and many have to fight tooth and nail to get the right provision for their children. It shouldn’t be this way.

Every child deserves the best education, no matter what their ability or circumstances. The support system for children with Special Educational Needs has been at crisis point for years and has largely been ignored by successive Tory governments.