Childhood has changed. Today it is in many ways unrecognisable from the childhood experienced by young people even a decade ago – another world compared with my own.
The technology in children’s homes and in their pockets; the exponential growth in child poverty; growing anxiety and mental health pressures, and the increase in identification of children’s additional learning needs – all factors beyond the school gates shaping children’s experiences.
Schools are struggling to give children a childhood that is safe, fulfilling and truly sets them up for life.
My vision is that a child born today, under this Government, will experience a childhood that does exactly that.
And for no child will that be truer than one with special educational needs.
SEND pupils have been let down
Children with SEND have been badly let down by a system in which basic support is too often reserved for those whose families are prepared and able to fight for it.
I have always believed that every child with special educational needs who can be accommodated in a mainstream school, should be. Indeed, most children with special educational needs tend to be.
Families have fought for decades for that right: for their children to experience as conventional an education as possible, alongside their friends, to set them up so they can achieve and thrive, so they can leave school ready for university, an apprenticeship, for work, and ready for life ahead.
We’ve not waited for the Schools White Paper to take the steps required to set up mainstream schools to better support children with SEND.
We’re investing £200m in teacher training, with a requirement for every teacher to be trained to support children with SEND; providing £3.7bn pounds to build 60,000 new school places for children with SEND; putting a Best Start Family Hub in every community complete with SEND experts to help identify and manage children’s needs earlier. And a new “inclusion” category for Ofsted inspections, just like teaching and curriculum.
But we also need the very fabric of every mainstream school system to give a brilliant education for every child, including those with SEND.
That is not a system we need to build from scratch. When I visit schools across the country, I see what’s possible. Pupils with SEND flourishing in mainstream classrooms because their school has the expertise, the culture – and the space – to deliver it.
Dedicated spaces where pupils can go when they need extra support, where they can take time out to regulate their behaviour. Teachers who’ve adapted their approach. Buildings designed with every child in mind. The progress we want to see everywhere already exists somewhere.
Schools will be ‘inclusive by design’
So now is the time to build.
That’s why I’m announcing measures to make all our schools inclusive by design.
Our ambition is that every secondary school will have an inclusion base, a dedicated space where pupils with SEND can access support or take time out alongside their regular lessons.
For some schools that will mean bricks and mortar, but for lots it will simply mean a classroom or area inside the existing building, designed with the children it will serve front of mind.
I’ve already seen the difference they make: children thriving alongside their peers, with targeted support when they need it. Now we’re making this the standard nationwide.
New guidance on school buildings
And alongside we’ll publish guidance on how school buildings can better support pupils with SEND. From lighting and acoustics to accessibility and outdoor calming spaces, these are the foundations of an environment where every child can focus, regulate, and learn.
Step by step, brick by brick, we are building a mainstream system that will be unrecognisable from the one today in its support for children with SEND.
This is real, tangible change, building a reality among families and schools alike that there is a better way, and that children with SEND in every corner of the country can have their needs met in their local school.
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In the coming weeks I’ll be setting out my full vision for what it should feel like to be a child in this country through the next decade, a child born under this Government, where background will no longer mean destiny.
Our Schools White Paper is a golden chance to transform the futures of millions of children in our country – one that comes round only once in a generation. I’m determined that we seize it, and put children on the path to better opportunity, better lives.
Bridget Phillipson is Education Secretary
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