A good first step would be for schools to treat inclusion as more than a word, to display a willingness to
jump on bullying where it occurs, and to make efforts to ensure Send kids aren’t isolated. Involving disabled
people in Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) lessons would be a start.
I’ve been into my children’s primary school armed with my sports wheelchair. The results were positive.
The children were much more open to giving it a spin than their teachers were. But it also requires action
by government. Its continuing obsession with league tables and data-led inspections serves only to set
inclusion back.
Consider the well-known phenomenon of “off rolling”, where schools “persuade” parents to remove Send
children by suggesting that if they were to, say, home school them then the school wouldn’t need to mar
their permanent records with exclusions.
The practice is inimical to children’s interests, but it is very much in schools interests because it improves
their results, which is what Ofsted inspectors look at when they call. The report calls for urgent action and it
deserves a wider readership.
It is possible to do better. My wife and I were dreading our son’s transition to high school, which loomed at
the beginning of the current school year, his last at his current school. It gave us sleepless nights. The
attitude at one local school that my wife encountered during a tour of open days frankly horrified us.
Yet the Senco at the school he will be attending has eased our minds. She seems genuinely committed to
the cause. A notably forthright individual, she’s someone you’d feel confident having on your side if you
were facing a battle. Battles are what you all to often face with a Send child.
We could do with a few more like her, though.