In recent months, politicians and the media have focused not on how to ensure those children have access to an inclusive education, but on conversations about whether private schools should pay VAT and the ostensibly outsized burden that SEND pupils place on councils.
This oversight is hardly surprising – the UK's education system has always been institutionally ableist, built on an assumption that Disabled children aren't worth it. It was only in 1970 that a law deeming some students uneducable, and therefore not requiring schooling, was removed from statute books.
Even today, schools are run on institutionally ableist policies that view Disabled children solely in financial terms. These range from 'bums in seats' attendance rules, which ignore the reality that being Disabled means your health and capacity fluctuate day to day, to 'behavioural management' policies that have seen Disabled students being increasingly physically restrained in school or isolated from their peers.
Such policy failures have led to a growing reliance on segregated school settings that remove Disabled and Deaf children's right to fully inclusive mainstream education.
"The reality is that the education of Disabled children and young people has never been fit for purpose, and no government has ever really made any significant improvements," explained Dr Edmore Masendeke, policy and research lead for the Alliance for Inclusive Education, who campaign for the right of all Disabled pupils and students to be fully included in mainstream education, training and apprenticeships with all necessary supports.
Successive governments can get away with this chronic underfunding because it's widely acceptable to discuss Disabled children as though they are nothing more than a monetary burden. This was evident earlier this year when, in a meeting this year about the rising cost of council support, three Conservative councillors at Warwickshire County Council made ableist comments about children identified as having SEND.
The councillors dismissed the existence of neurodevelopmental impairments such as ADHD. Blaming social media use and "parenting skill shortages", they suggested affected children are "just really badly behaved" and "need some form of strict correction". One even seemed to advocate for the exclusion or institutionalisation of Disabled and neurodivergent children, saying we should return to historic ways of "dealing with them".
The trio's comments showed a lack of awareness and understanding of the reality of parents and Disabled young people trying to access support in a system built to gatekeep and delay. One of the councillors suggested families "automatically" receive diagnoses and help after "the plea of a mother".
In reality, children with autism and ADHD can wait up to five years to be assessed, while less than 5% of children have access to an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP), a legal document by a local authority that outlines the special needs of a child or young person and the support they require. Government figures suggest the percentage of pupils with SEND but no EHCP rose to 13.6% this year, up from 13.0% in 2023.
Even when an ECHP is in place, SEND support doesn't always amount to much. The money could provide study skills support for a group, pay for assistive technology/software or make an individual reasonable adjustment for a child, such as providing large print documents or making a classroom more accessible.
But, as campaigners have pointed out, it often barely covers the one-to-one support kids need, let alone anything else. This year, more than 90% of respondents to a survey of National Education Union members said their school did not have access to enough in-class learning support assistants for SEND children.
One respondent said their school did not have "enough teaching assistant support due to low pay. So even if a pupil has EHCP, they do not always get support", while another said: "We have more and more children with needs and less staff resources to support them."
The base level of funding that the government allocates to a school – currently a minimum of £4,610 per pupil for primary schools in England – is often also being stretched to cover support for SEND children who haven't got access to an EHCP.
The UK is among the richest countries in the world. Yet debates about its SEND system are always limited to its cost, without acknowledging the real problem: the system isn't even providing most students with the support they need.
Councils have spent more than £425m fighting tribunals against parents and carers who disagree with their decision not to provide support to a child or young person in the past decade. The government's data shows that more than 98% of tribunal appeals ruled in parents' favour in 2022/23, meaning they agreed the local authority had not complied with its legal duties.
Disabled children of all backgrounds and their parents "spend every day fighting for access to rights and inclusion that should be given as standard", said my colleague at Disability Rights UK, education campaigner Bethany Bale.
Reeves' budget only further entrenches that improvements to the SEND system will continue to flatline, as they have for more than 11 years, with schools getting less and less, said Tania Tirraoro, co-director of Special Needs Jungle, a parent-led website providing information about SEND.
"This just perpetuates the number of children whose needs aren't met through a lack of resources and who then may end up requiring an EHCP," Tirraoro told openDemocracy.
Fixing the SEND system requires a £3bn-a-year cash injection, according to the Disabled People's Manifesto, which was published in the run-up to July's general election. But yesterday Reeves showed us that Keir Starmer's government is committed to its repeated refusal to "turn the taps on" to increase spending.
We all agree that our children are our future but the government seems resigned to the idea that Disabled children and young people are a burden rather than people with rights.
If Reeves was serious about rebuilding schools, she'd be talking about much more than bricks and mortar. We need proper funding and investment for the SEND system, the removal of barriers to accessing EHCPs and support for those who don't receive them.
And above all, we need to ensure mainstream education settings are inclusive to all Disabled children. Until that happens, the chancellor's dream of "children from ordinary backgrounds get[ting] a good chance in life" will remain just that.
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