The Covid-19 pandemic has heaped much more pressure on an already stretched SEND system. In part one of a new series on the state of our SEND system, Daniel Sobel considers the key problems and outlines how we must move forward...


The full extent of the problems in the SEND system were just being acknowledged prior to the pandemic and the landmark 2019 Education Select Committee report was brutally honest and damning. It appears that little has progressed since then. Perhaps understandably, in a world of Covid-19 and lockdown learning, we have found other priorities to overwhelm the inbox…

My purpose in this article is to help put some of these issues back on the table and to share with you some suggestions for changing the status quo.


The Education Select Committee report

I won’t regurgitate the Education Select Committee report here. Suffice to say that the report concludes that poor implementation of the government’s SEND reforms has resulted in “confusion, at times unlawful practice, bureaucratic nightmares, buck-passing, no accountability, strained resources, and adversarial experiences” (Headteacher Update, 2019).

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