Who Will Be SEND? Questions, Not Answers on the Reform Ahead

England’s SEND system is on the cusp of its most significant reform in a generation — but one crucial question is going largely unanswered: who will actually be SEND under the new framework?

In Fixing a Broken System I mapped out the whole reform agenda. The Ofsted Inspection Framework, the Curriculum and Assessment Review, the Schools White Paper, and the SEND Reform consultation, all sitting alongside each other for the first time in a generation and attempting to move in the same direction. That piece was a landscape view.

Changing from 4 broad areas of need to 5 areas of development might seem like a small change, but to me it raised the question – Who will be SEND, and who will not?

That question sounds simple. It is not. In the current system, the SEND register can be a catchall, for students working below. It has been identifying children with genuine special educational needs, but it has also been flagging children the system is not supporting, for reasons that have nothing to do with SEND. It looks like the reform is going to separate those groups, quietly, and I’m not seeing much discussion around it, yet it could have a big impact.

This matters for children. It matters for parents. It matters for schools trying to evidence their work under a new inspection framework that is already live. How we talk about children, the language we use, the data we collect, and the questions we ask of it, all of it matters.

This has been going around in my head since I first read the white paper and I’ve talked to a fair few people about what the impact might be. What follows is my best attempt (with my ADHD brain) to take you through my thought process and look at some of the implications. Like my last document, it’s not short, there is a lot to unpack, but it is important we are thinking about this now and preparing, to ensure that no child is left behind.