Truth about Special Educational Needs, by a teacher on the frontline. It costs £11bn a year and fails countless children. Now read this specialist's shocking dispatch on what REALLY happens to her pupils and parents... and what must be done | Retrui News | Retrui
Truth about Special Educational Needs, by a teacher on the frontline. It costs £11bn a year and fails countless children. Now read this specialist's shocking dispatch on what REALLY happens to her pupils and parents... and what must be done
SOURCE:Daily Mail
To the casual onlooker, the 16-year-old girl I had been helping for several months was a typical teenager.
To the casual onlooker, the 16-year-old girl I had been helping for several months was a typical teenager.
While Fiona could be sparky and funny, she could just as easily be sullen and uncommunicative.
She had a short concentration span and struggled to socialise – behaviour exacerbated by the many hours she spent in her bedroom, scrolling on her phone.
Our paths had crossed because she had been diagnosed with ADHD and autism: I am employed by a private Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) company, funded by a local council in England, to support children and young people like her who are no longer able to attend school.
Fiona was a hard nut to crack but, over the course of several sessions, I discovered she had a keen interest in crafting. Spotting what looked like genuine talent, I took her to various art shops for inspiration.
On one such visit, she met an artist who kindly invited her to help out in her studio for a day or two. Fiona was more excited than I had seen her in weeks, yet her enthusiasm was not shared by either her mother or my boss, who told me in no uncertain terms to shut down this avenue of support and keep Fiona's sessions 'within the home'.
She 'wasn't ready', I was told, and we 'needed to keep helping her for as long as we can'.
And as Fiona has an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCPs fund specialist learning tech and services, and a suite of support workers like me) that allows her to remain in 'education' until the age of 25, that could mean for another nine years.
A fifth of all children in England are now reported to have special educational needs and disabilities
Incidentally, this is not education in the traditional sense of exams, skills or qualifications, but rather a vague holding pattern of 'support', 'guidance' and 'decision-making practice'.
I only wish Fiona was an isolated case. Sadly, she is not. In my years on the front line of the SEND system, I have worked with many dozens of young people like her.
They are the products of a care programme established with the best of intentions, but one that has since morphed into a toxic concatenation of vested interests, questionable science, profiteering and colossal financial waste.
If that sounds melodramatic, then the numbers speak for themselves.
Since 2014, when the special needs system was significantly overhauled, the number of claims soared – a rise accelerated by the Covid lockdowns.
Today, a fifth of all children in England are now reported to have SEND. While in Scotland, an astonishing 43 per cent of pupils are deemed to have some form of additional learning need.
Inevitably, these spiralling figures are accompanied by a vast and ever-increasing price tag.
Half of the increase in total school spending since 2015 has gone on SEND provision, with expenditure hitting £11 billion a year in 2024-2025 and expected to rise to a mind-boggling £22 billion by 2031, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
Some of that money is spent in schools on specialist teaching assistants. But since councils are legally bound to support pupils with EHCPs, a large proportion of this funding now flows to a plethora of private education providers – such as the one I work for – who step in when the child quits mainstream schooling. Many of these providers exist outside any Ofsted oversight.
In other words, the system has become a vast gravy train, not to mention a political hot potato for Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary now facing the unenviable task of reforming it.
Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, has hinted
Following the launch of a consultation this week, she is expected to deliver a white paper on SEND reform in March.
A key focus is expected to be on EHCPs, which were originally intended to be for children with the most severe needs but whose use, according to the think tank Policy Exchange, has increased 83 per cent in the past decade.
Before Christmas, Phillipson's hint that children with milder conditions such as ADHD and anxiety would not be given EHCPs was greeted with howls of outrage and charges of 'cruelty' from the Left-wing SEND vested interests.
Labour's U-turn on welfare reform last summer shows what an uphill task she has in convincing her party's restive backbenchers that denying vulnerable children state-funded support is in their and the country's best interests.
They should listen to her.
In my view, working at the heart of it as I do, SEND has become a grotesque leviathan that, intentionally or otherwise, incentivises young people to remain incapacitated.
How else to interpret cases like Fiona's? Or that of Theo, another student of mine, a cheerful 17-year-old with diagnoses of autism and ADHD who had emerged from school with barely a GCSE to his name.
A placement at plumbing college had failed, and by the time I met him he'd joined the near-million 16-24-year-olds classed as NEET: not in education, employment or training.
Yet Theo clearly had potential. He was interested in buying and selling and, with his agreement, I arranged meetings at local pawn shops to explore possible opportunities there.
As in Fiona's case, his mother reacted badly, as did my line manager, who told me I should instead focus on helping Theo 'manage' his autism and ADHD.
It was the same depressing story with Imogen, another 16-year-old who had not been in school for an astonishing five years. She had no qualifications, no desire to attend college and, when we first met, was so socially withdrawn she could not order a drink in a café.
Yet over the months I worked with her (for two hours twice a week), the blank-eyed girl I had first encountered gradually came out of her shell.
I have become deeply frustrated and, frankly, upset that my role is to bake into these children a form of learned helplessness, writes the specialist
Imogen enjoyed baking and occasionally helped her mother's friend muck out her stables. She also cared for a younger sister who was also beginning to take significant amounts of time off school.
From this admittedly scant information, we nonetheless managed to compile a basic CV that reflected her skills as a caring young woman capable of domestic and outdoor tasks. My plan was to accompany her to visit cafés and shops as she enquired about part-time work.
This time, however, her mother was not merely dismayed but furious. My modest efforts to give Imogen some structure and self-reliance were, she told me, setting her daughter up to 'fail' – a sentiment echoed (again) by my line manager.
While our sessions – funded, lest we forget, by the council – continued, all talk of college or employment ceased, much to the evident satisfaction of both Imogen's mother and my employer.
I have become deeply frustrated and, frankly, upset that my role is to bake into these children a form of learned helplessness, which appears designed to preserve dependency rather than overcome it.
Their mental health struggles are curable or at least can be ameliorated to the extent they can live
fulfilling, purposeful lives. But the system is making their conditions become permanent labels – a fact not helped by annual reviews of EHCPs being no longer mandated.
The situation is worsened by the uncomfortable truth that it is often not in a family's financial interest to encourage an older teenager into work or education. With an EHCP, many families, particularly lone parents, are entitled to carer's allowance, which can amount to hundreds of pounds a month.
If a young person takes up employment, a portion of this income disappears, and is unlikely to be replaced by the take-home pay from a handful of hours on minimum wage. And once a family becomes accustomed to a regular income thanks to benefits, it is difficult to contemplate its loss.
The unpalatable reality is that for the company I work for, a student gaining independence, applying for jobs and overcoming social or emotional difficulties represents lost income, writes the teacher
If this sounds judgmental, it is not meant to be. It is entirely understandable that, for many families, the incentive to maintain benefits outweighs the incentive to pursue precarious work or education.
Nor do I believe for a moment that the parents I meet – many of whom, as headteachers often tell me, barrel into schools demanding counsellors, teaching assistants and on-site psychologists for their 'disordered' children – do not love them deeply. And I believe they think they are acting in their child's best interests.
I feel genuine warmth for the majority of the families I work with and, in my experience, many are responding to a culture saturated in the language of diagnosis and victimhood: from celebrities boasting of their children's 'conditions' to social media influencers offering tips on how to obtain – and benefit from – an EHCP.
For some parents, such a label even becomes a status symbol.
I have seen the pride in a mother or father's eyes when an EHCP is finally granted, viewed as a totem of their fierce advocacy and love. Nor is it their fault that the system is currently weighted in their favour.
At the moment, parents can take their local authority to court to challenge decisions on an EHCP. Last year, there were 14,000 such cases clogging up the tribunal system, and once they do get heard 99 per cent of parents find judges rule in their favour.
They simply have no idea of the corporate interests that feed on the largesse of local authorities, that have a stake in a child's continued helplessness.
The unpalatable reality is that for the company I work for, a student gaining independence, applying for jobs and overcoming social or emotional difficulties represents lost income. The 'ideal' student is one we can 'support' – paid for week in, week out by the taxpayer until they turn 25.
I am fully aware that I am part of the problem, even if, like almost everyone working in the system, I took the job with the best of intentions. I wanted to help young people and their families but have come to realise that for the most part my work is aimless.
Nor is any of this intended to suggest that children, or their parents, are inventing their difficulties. There is undoubtedly a cohort of young people with complex mental health and disabilities, and it is to society's credit that we have become better at recognising and supporting them.
But while many of the children I work with do face genuine challenges, an excessive focus on medicalisation often obscures the far messier, more complex causes of their distress.
Family breakdown, generational unemployment and the relentless rise of mobile phones and technology all contribute to restless, unhappy children who struggle to concentrate.
Some studies even suggest a correlation between children 'missing from education' and the type of housing they live in – with new-build estates often lacking community, infrastructure or even a bus route, forcing its youth to retreat indoors.
I cannot help thinking, too, that some modern schools, with their high security fences, metal detectors at the entrance and noisy canteens with long lunch queues, are not remotely helpful in enticing back anxious, stay-away students.
These issues all demand our attention. But they do not necessarily constitute a 'special educational need', nor do they require an EHCP.
The real kicker, though, is the mounting evidence that this ruinously expensive SEND system that is pushing councils into bankruptcy is actually failing the children it is set up to help.
In 2024, the National Audit Office reported that, 'the system is still not delivering better outcomes for children and young people'.
It found that the proportion of those with SEND who go on to sustained employment, apprenticeship or education after leaving study at 16 or 18 remains stuck at 69 per cent between 2018/19 to 2021/22 (for children without SEND, the figure is 85 per cent).
So, despite vast increased sums being poured into the system, there was no improvement in getting young adults off their sofas and into a world in which they have direction and fulfilment.
It is unconscionable that hundreds of thousands of children are trapped in this doom loop of care that does not help them and has become a colossal drain on the public purse.