Almost 120,000 children missed education at some point in 2022/23 (rising to 126,000 last year), and 13,000 moved to home education. To address the underlying issues behind that absence, the government must better understand the needs of SEND children, and in particular those with ASD, ADHD, dyslexia and other neurodivergent conditions.
The current mainstream school system is fundamentally unsuitable for the 1.82 million neurodivergent children currently in school. This cannot be fixed by increasing attendance monitoring, fining parents or a national awareness campaign.
The problems are more profound; the standard curriculum and teaching methods clash with the diverse learning styles and needs of neurodivergent children. The classrooms are too crowded, noisy, and bright, with far too many children per class, causing sensory overload and meltdowns. Underfunded and undertrained teachers lack the skills and equipment to support their SEND students and are more likely to resort to disciplinary actions to attempt to get students to confirm. Outdated buildings lack quiet spaces or sensory areas. Outdated uniforms with a narrow range of stiff, uncomfortable clothing options create unnecessary pressures for children. Pressure to meet assessment targets and cover a narrow curriculum at pace leaves less able students trailing behind.
If the government is willing to move beyond simplistic measures, we have a golden opportunity to revolutionise our education, making it fit for purpose for the first time since the 1950s. A long-sighted view would allow us to support a new generation with the skills and aptitude to achieve the Industrial Strategy’s aim of being world leaders in AI, science, and technology. Without the courage to make the necessary changes, we will continue to produce new generations of young people who lack the skills required for the digital world and are characterised by poor mental and physical health.
Currently forecasting a £230m deficit in its dedicated schools grant by 2029/30, Somerset Council is proposing changes.[1] to the SEND provision to help balance its budget, including:
The aim is clear: reduce the cost of specialist education by sending more children with EHCPs to mainstream schools. However, Somerset has an abysmal record of supporting SEND children. Over the past year Somerset Council has been fined more than £6,000 for its poor performance in providing SEND schooling. Last year, the Local Government Ombudsman investigated 22 complaints against Somerset Council and upheld all of them.
In our case, we have experienced concerning problems with Somerset Council and our mainstream primary school, including:
Local Authority
The school
The list of failures on the part of the Council and school could go on and on, but I believe the selection of issues listed above is enough to make my point.
We are not a wealthy family, but we have been able to dig deep and pay for private assessments and solicitors to help us fight to get our children the help they need, are entitled to, and deserve. However, this has had a significant impact on our savings and our own mental and physical health. Both of us are now suffering from stress-related health problems, which is not uncommon among SEND parents. We are the lucky ones. Parents like us are able to use private funds to secure diagnoses, fight councils for appropriate provision or pay for private schooling. Parents in poverty can’t do this, and their children are dropping out in droves. If we want to tackle the large numbers of children dropping out of education, we must understand the relationship between deprivation, neurodiversity and SEND provision.
The state's role should be to look after its most vulnerable, not act as abusers. If children were screaming and crying at the prospect of returning home at the end of the school day, we would expect teachers to be swift to take safeguarding action. Yet, no action is taken when children are terrified of going to school in the morning. On the contrary, commentators such as the Tony Blair Institute (which should know better) is proposing that parents be fined for a ‘burgeoning crisis of behaviour’ in schools. How about looking towards the root cause of children’s behaviour? Children whose Window of Tolerance has been far exceeded by the school environment and curriculum will behave this way, whether or not they are neurodivergent.
School should be a nurturing place, providing a rounded education and helping children to flourish so they can lead productive and fulfilling lives as adults. The root causes of the issues are overcrowded classrooms, noisy school settings that cannot flex according to children’s needs, and curriculums which rush children at a dizzying pace through the finer details of subjunctive forms and subordinate clauses. No wonder The Children's Society’s annual study of 15-year-olds across 27 nations shows the UK ranking bottom for life satisfaction. Many children experience schools as deeply challenging environments. Autistic children struggle the most. According to the Autistic Society, just 26% of autistic children feel happy in school. Researchers have found that 92% of children and young people experiencing ‘school distress’ are neurodivergent, with some expressing suicidal thoughts, self-harming or displaying high-risk behaviour.
There is a clear push from the government towards greater inclusion of SEND children in mainstream schools, but including children with complex needs that need specialist teaching strategies in already overcrowded, overstretched and underfunded mainstream schools is a recipe for disaster, with ever greater numbers of children likely to drop out of formal education, or display challenging behaviours which disrupt the education of their classmates.
In line with government direction, Somerset Council is keen to cut the bill for specialist schools by keeping SEND children in mainstream settings, yet the proportion of Somerset schools judged inadequate by Ofsted is above the national average. It had the third-highest rate of exclusions for children with SEND and the second-highest rate of suspensions in England, according to the latest national data available in September 2024. There has been a 22.6% increase in pupils severely absent from school in the county since 2022. Of the 1,382 children in Elective Home Education (EHE) in 2021, almost 20% had EHCPs or were on the SEN register. According to a survey conducted by Somerset Council, the top two reasons for EHE were a lack of confidence in the school or SEND reasons. Nationally, there has been a 71% increase in families citing dissatisfaction with mainstream SEND provision as a reason for home education between 2022 and 2023.
Ofsted has previously identified the following issues at Somerset Council:
How can we send more vulnerable children into an already broken system which has already lost the confidence of many parents as noted in the SEND and AP Provision Green Paper. Those with the means to do so resort to the law to get their children into specialist settings that can provide the support their disabled children need. Those who cannot do so drop out of the system, whether becoming home-educated or ‘persistent absentees’. The Children’s Commissioner acknowledges that many home-educated children have SEND and are not home-educating through choice.
It is insanity to assume we can resolve the problems by withdrawing funding for specialist settings or fining parents for non-attendance or poor behaviour. If the government intends to put more children with complex special needs into the mainstream environment, it will need to invest in properly training teachers to meet those needs. Yet, teaching assistants – who are often detailed with their one-to-support are only required to have basic literacy skills. In 2023, only 39% of teachers in mainstream schools received more than half a day of autism training. This falls to just 14% for secondary school teachers. Teachers are not consultant paediatricians, educational or clinical psychologists, or therapists. They are not even specialists in the wide range of developmental issues, neuro-differences or health problems. Teachers are (or should) be specialists in mainstream teaching methods and the curriculum. Their lack of specialist knowledge must not be allowed to act as a barrier to children accessing vital support at a time when their brains and personalities are still developing.
We will also need smaller classes, properly equipped schools, and nurturing spaces where children can take breaks as they (not the staff) require. We need to take a radical look at the curriculum, giving us the opportunity to increase teaching time for science, coding and essential life skills such as financial management. To make time, let’s get rid of religious assemblies and RE. And while we are at it, let's reduce the ridiculously long summer holidays – after all, we no longer need our children to bring in the harvest in August.
For those who continue to need specialist education settings, we need to ensure these meet their needs. There is an assumption that children with SEND have limited academic potential. Specialist schools focus on life skills and offer a limited range of GCSEs, skewed towards subjects like Home Economics. While many disabled children may go on to have catering jobs, this limits children like my son, who has a very high IQ. Many neurodivergent children have a special interest in gaming and coding, yet this is not reflected in the curriculum available to them.
Assessment of special needs and identification of interventions and support must not be done any longer by the same people who are also responsible for funding these interventions. This is enabling cash-strapped councils to manipulate the EHCP system and exploit its complexity to deny children appropriate support to reduce the financial burden of the SEND provision.
If we are serious about fostering a future workforce equipped for the digital economy, we must fundamentally rethink how we educate and support neurodivergent children. The current system is failing families, and without urgent reform, we risk an even greater crisis of lost potential, economic stagnation, and worsening mental health outcomes. The state must fulfil its duty to protect and nurture its most vulnerable rather than acting as a barrier to their success.
Ends
January 2025
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[1] Short videos detailing the changes can be found here: Funding and provision for children with additional needs - Somerset Council - Citizen Space