An overwhelming majority of those who interact with the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) system are deeply concerned about the quality of provision that young people are getting relative to the ever-spiralling cost of the system.

In policy terms, we have the worst of both worlds, SEND is expensive and delivers inadequate outcomes for those the system is designed to help. Like current welfare reform, there is an implicit systematic failure that means the cost rises exponentially but we have no actual success for the children trapped in a system that spectacularly fails to deliver for the people who need it.

That dire state of existence is why I am cautiously optimistic that Labour have decided to bring reform forward for our young people. That being said, it would be remiss of me to not caution against falling into the same pitfalls that education policymakers have for years. -Namely putting emotion over well-evidenced interventions that raise outcomes for young people with SEND.

There are three areas where I want to set Labour a challenge to improve outcomes for young people with SEND:

Correctly diagnosing the policy issue we want to solve

The overwhelming issue that is facing SEND policy at present is the lack of clear direction about what the actual problem we are trying to solve is.

For some educators, the idea of a good quality education looks like different outcomes or metrics of success for young people with SEND. For others, it is centred around empowering young people with SEND to achieve stronger outcomes.

I would argue that the system needs to be designed to empower young people with SEND to achieve excellent outcomes and everything we are doing with SEND policy should be geared towards helping young people to access the resources they need to succeed.

Taking this approach will enable us to move beyond the myriad of half-baked ideas that are well intentioned but have no strategic impetus to actually improve people’s lives.

Evidence first

I wrote a few months ago that SEND was the last “wild west” in English education policy. The words, whilst provocative, are intended to convey a genuine worry that the quality of SEND interventions is poor because decisions about what interventions take place are not grounded in evidence.

Similarly there is an issue with lack of quality in diagnosis for SEND, fuelled largely by the private diagnosis boom which then has taken responsibility for diagnosis away from the state and into the hands of people profiteering from people’s needs.

This lack of an evidence base for decision making is not a new phenomenon, the effects of poor reading policy from the 1960’s still reverberates for tens of thousands of people today.

However, like we see from the 1960s, the cost of getting education policy wrong can have long-term consequences for the people it is designed to help.

The bill the government is bringing forward is an opportunity to get that policy right, however that process has to involve looking at the evidence and holding local authorities responsible for Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) that are not fit for purpose and give a legally enforceable responsibility to schools to put in place interventions that make young people’s lives worse.

Not accepting lower standards for young people with SEND

Overarching all of this is the need to have a stronger belief that young people with a SEND can achieve exceptional outcomes. There are three reasons for this.

Firstly, we know that students with SEND have disproportionately low confidence relative to their peers. Passively accepting lower standards for them is both morally wrong and setting them up to fail.

Secondly, whilst there are differences in outcomes for different groups of people, there are schools out there where students with SEND make as good, if not better progress than their non-SEND peers. This is proof in of itself that SEND children can achieve well, if there is a rigorous expectation that they can.

Thirdly and potentially most importantly, as a liberal democracy we value individuals and believe in the innate ability of humans to flourish in the right conditions. We have a moral duty for our SEND provision to unlock that potential in young people.

How do we achieve this?

In the upcoming legislation we have a chance to reset the playing field on SEND policy. These 10 recommendations are an opportunity to get that reset right:

1. Inclusion of SEND progress as a key metric for success in OFSTED and other accountability metrics for education establishments.
2. The Department for Education to work with experts to produce a list of best practice interventions for schools and LEAs to implement reducing the use of poor practice across the sector.
3. Increase availability of LEA Educational Psychologists to conduct in-house assessments and increase regulatory frameworks to improve accountability for “diagnosis for hire” practices.
4. Produce a national SEND strategy where the focus is on improving outcomes for young people with SEND and helping instil a culture of high expectations for them.
5. Unlock capital investment into specialist units in mainstream schools and increase funding for new LEA maintained, academies and free schools which can provide special school places, saving millions by moving away from private equity backed special schools.
6. Improve the quality of teacher training for working with young people with SEND as part of the ITT and ECF frameworks, ensuring that teachers coming through the system are well equipped to support young people.
7. Move away from black cab towards surge pricing models for school transport, saving millions which can be reinvested into the system.
8. Introduce a tribunal category of ineffective or unevidenced intervention to deter LEAs from producing EHCPs that are inappropriate or not designed to benefit the young person.
9. Shift EHCP funding towards national and local government, rather than schools, to allow for more expert financial management and value-for-money for SEND provision.
10. Bring in a new regulatory framework for SEND practitioners working within LEAs to ensure consistency and quality of EHCPs.

* Callum Robertson is a teacher and member of the Federal Board. He is a Watford Borough Councillor.