Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, I’ve done it again. I’ve read something in the newspapers and it’s made me cross. No, it’s not the latest from the Brexit Express (although that is a close contender) and neither is it the latest skeleton to come tumbling out of Boris Johnson’s closet. Nope, you’ve guessed it. It’s the one thing that is pretty much guaranteed to have my fingers stomping all over the keyboard; the treatment of SEND in the press.
This time it’s the Times. Not a newspaper I frequent more than occasionally (my in-laws get it for the crossword – apparently – and I tend to give it a glance through when I’m there), today’s article is another good reason not to make a special effort to either get myself a subscription or go to the newsagent with my actual money.
Apparently, you see, pupils are losing out on £400 million of school funding because it’s being ‘diverted’, ‘siphoned off’, no less, to special needs. Parents are getting ‘golden tickets’ in the form of Education, Health and Care Pans and councils have had to ‘raid’ their mainstream schools budgets (to the tune of that £400 million) in order to pay for the ‘surge’ of pupils categorised as having special needs.
So let’s get a few things straight and see if we can’t redress the balance, just a little.
1. Disabled children are people.
Actually, I think that’s the only thing that needs to be said. I could go on at length about the contributions to school communities and society in general, of disabled young people or I could remind you of the world of statements that ended at 16 and how that was the time when many fell off a metaphorical cliff edge.
I could rant about the rights of all children to an education and I could add several thousand words on the subject of segregation, hate crime and danger if that education doesn’t happen. I could take a trip down the school corridor and point out that the door mat isn’t a learning island for anyone and that disability can be seen on the outside or appear only on the inside.
I could veer into policy and weigh up the pros and cons of ring fencing the SEND budget in the same way as the Pupil Premium (or whatever it is called now) and describe the damaging effects of the school accountability system, the inaccessible nature of exams and tests, the overblown curriculum, but I won’t.
I could point out the lower life expectancy of disabled people, and in particular learning disabled people, that has nothing to do with disability and everything to do with treating people as commodities, as if they are, somehow, a character in a book, less than human so I’ll say it again:
disabled children are people.
I expect I’ll have to keep on repeating that.
The Diary of a Not So Ordinary Boy 