The Special Needs Scandal

Article by Nisha Rikhi

There is a brewing scandal in Britain over how special needs children are treated. We have seen thousands of disabled children unable to attend school due to a lack of special needs places. Now we have an education secretary undermining the rights of the most vulnerable children in the country. This article explores the scandal and what must be done to make it right for the most vulnerable group of children in the country.

The education secretary needs to resign as a matter of urgency. She is presiding over an education system that seeks to undermine and derogate the rights of special needs children.She has suggested in a Guardian article that parents need to think differently about special needs support. This is a direct attack on the most vulnerable children as she is licensing the derogation of their rights. The education secretary is suggesting that disabled children do not have the same rights as non-disabled children and do not deserve the support that they are legally entitled to. Under the Equality Act 2010 and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, government and councils are required to ensure that their policies and actions do not discriminate against disabled and special needs children. There is simply no excuse for refusing to comply with the law.

Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) are legal documents which set out what support and provision a school and local authority must make to allow a special needs child to gain an education. These documents are very difficult to get because county councils simply do not want to acknowledge that there are children who need specialist support. This is because council budgets are already stretched and council leaders may wish to divert funding away from special needs provision to fund other services. This is simply indefensible. It is councils’ and the government’s first duty to look after the most vulnerable in the county. That includes children in care, special needs children and vulnerable adults. Councils should be looking at reducing non-essential spending and selling off disused properties in order to salvage their budgets. By non-essential spending, I mean executive bonuses and advertising campaigns, not money that is spent on children in care, special needs children or adult social care. They should be endeavouring to make the best use of the money available to them to make provision for special needs children. They most certainly should not be launching direct attacks on the most vulnerable children in order to make monetary gains.

Special needs schools are specialist schools set up for children who cannot have their needs met in mainstream school. These schools are for children who are not able to access education in a normal mainstream school. The whole point of special needs schools is to ensure that every disabled child or child with special needs can access and benefit from an education. Denying children special needs school places simply to save money is criminal. Every council has a duty to act in the best interests of the child. This means that the council should be following the law and acting in the best interests of the child. Budgetary and monetary considerations are no excuse for failing to offer a child an available place in a special needs school. In some cases, parents are having to sue county councils to force them to give their child an appropriate school place. This is wholly unacceptable. County councils need to urgently build special needs schools and invest in special needs units in mainstream schools. They need to create local school provision that allows for and takes into account the needs of special children. This is what they are legally obliged to do and this is what special needs children want and deserve.

Home-schooling is often the option of last resort for parents when their special needs children’s needs cannot be met in mainstream school. This is often because mainstream schools do not have the budgets, the facilities or the staff to manage the children’s needs. It is usually the case that parents pull their children out of school when the child is so unhappy that it is safer to keep them at home than force them to endure an environment which is toxic and failing to accommodate their needs. This is simply unacceptable. Every school has a legal obligation to meet the needs of their special needs students. Failure to meet needs of a special needs child is a breach of the Equalities Act 2010 and the Special Educational Needs and Disability Regulations 2014. No parent should have to resort to home schooling their child in order to get their basic educational needs met.

A complete lack of support for disabled children is detrimental for society. This is because these children grow up and become adults. If we want these children to become adults who can work and contribute to the economy, then we need to ensure the right support is in place to allow them to achieve that. The government needs to invest in appropriate education for these children that gives them the skills they need to live independently and enter paid work. Ensuring that these children are able to access decent education that allows them to thrive as adults is not difficult. It simply requires schools to meet the needs of these children. The fact that a significant number of special needs children end up claiming Universal Credit and PIP, is an indictment of the current education provision for special needs children. Failure to meet the needs of these children is having a catastrophic effect on their life chances and their lives as adults. In some cases, the wilful failure of councils to issue EHCPs and provide special needs school places is sentencing some children to a lifetime of benefit dependency. This is simply not good enough. These children deserve better. It is time for the government to enforce the law and require councils to issue EHCPs and provide special needs school places for these children.

Overall, it is clear that there is a special needs crisis in this country. The attitude of the education secretary is simply unacceptable. She either needs to resign so someone else can do the job or she needs to step up to the plate and help special needs children. Either way, the government needs to enforce the law. It is clear that county councils are in breach of their obligations under the Equality Act 2010 and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. This cannot continue. Government needs to force councils to build special needs schools, allocate special needs school places to special needs children and issue all special needs children EHCPs when they are asked for. Anything less is indefensible and immoral.