Politics Home Article | Education for all

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This article was commissioned by the Total Politics Impact team.

“A truly inclusive education system that works for every family.”

That is the ambitious claim made of the government’s recently announced Education for All Bill, which aims to deliver the reforms to special educational needs and development (SEND) support set out in the Schools White Paper.

The Education Committee, which I chair, undertook a major inquiry last year to understand the scale of the challenges facing children with SEND and their parents, carers and teachers, and to find evidence-based solutions.

Our report made a series of important recommendations for change, including early identification and support for children with SEND, ensuring the same level of support is available everywhere in mainstream schools and putting more support on a statutory footing, and increasing the number of state special school places so that children can be educated close to home.

I was very pleased to see many of our recommendations, based on evidence we heard from teachers, parents and carers, experts and children themselves, taken forward by government. For example, the government made early support one of its main principles for reform and strengthened the SEND offer available through Best Start Family Hubs.

But we know this will not be an easy or quick fix. My committee held an evidence session shortly after the White Paper’s publication, giving witnesses right across the education system an opportunity to respond to the proposals in detail.

Overall, our witnesses were cautiously optimistic. Many were pleased that the government had finally taken the issue head on and proposed some serious ideas for change. But it was clear that there are still several missing pieces of the puzzle.

Our witnesses raised the further steps needed to deliver a curriculum that is genuinely inclusive and flexible enough to deliver for every child. The recent curriculum and assessment review appears to be insufficient to deliver that, with more radical steps required.

There are also concerns about the scale of the resources required to transform the system.  While the government has provided additional funding, more detail is needed on the plan for implementation and the funding required to deliver this.

I was very pleased to see many of our recommendations, based on evidence we heard from teachers, parents and carers, experts and children themselves, taken forward by government

The committee was clear in our report, published last year, that what the education system needed was not tinkering at the edges but a root and branch transformation to make inclusivity the norm in every school.

Inclusion should be properly defined, given the resources needed to make it work, and leave no aspect of the life of a school untouched. We have seen first-hand how some inspiring schools are already putting this into practice. With the right support, many more could join them.

If the government’s reforms take account of the concerns raised to my committee and in response to the consultation, I’m optimistic that the Education for All Bill will make a genuine difference to the lives of children with SEND, their parents and carers and the professionals who work with them.