Opinion

SEND Review: What about support staff?

When it comes to the often-crucial role of support staff in supporting effective SEND provision, the long-awaited SEND Review is almost silent – this cannot be right, says Leigh Powell

We know that the SEND system is not working. It’s not working for children and young people and it’s not working for the staff who devote their working lives to supporting them.

The much-delayed SEND Review (DfE, 2022) should be an opportunity to address the many problems of the current system (for the sake of our children it needs to be) but will it?

The SEND Review has some laudable aims. It tackles entrenched issues that anyone who has ever been part of the system will immediately recognise – the exhausting and adversarial system for getting a child’s needs recognised, and most importantly met (as infamously highlighted by the Education Select Committee back in 2019), as well as issues around the spiralling costs of inappropriate provision.

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