‘The worst it’s ever been’: teachers decry Send crisis in England’s schools
Share:
Staff and parents share their experience as number of pupils with special educational needs spirals. “The Send [Special educational needs and disabilities] system is broken: completely and irrevocably,” said David Wilson, a deputy headteacher at an inner-city Manchester primary school where there were between six and 10 children with Send in each classroom. “This impacts everyone – children with and without special needs.”.
![[Jedidajah Otte]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2024/05/17/Jedidajah_Otte.png?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Wilson, who spent eight years of his career as a Senco [special educational needs coordinator], was among hundreds of people who shared their experience of SEN provision in the UK. Parents, teachers and Send specialists from across the country overwhelmingly agreed that things had become the worst they had ever been.
The number of children and young people entitled to government support in the form of education, health and care plans [EHCPs] is due to double to 1 million within a decade, a report found. The investigation by the National Audit Office (NAO) found that despite record levels of spending, there had been no signs of improvement in the lives of children with SEN.
Local authorities, the report further concluded, were being forced towards insolvency by rising demand for special school places and “high-needs” funding for specialists such as therapists, psychologists and teaching assistants. Hundreds of teachers and parents of children with and without SEN told the Guardian that mainstream schools had no hope of providing adequate support for the growing number of children with increasingly complex special needs.
