SEND

and Alternative Provision Improvement Plan: Right Kind of Pupil, Right Place, Right Price.

By Sharon Smith, Parent and PhD researcher

“We believe the most vulnerable children deserve the very highest quality of care. We will improve diagnostic assessment for schoolchildren, prevent the unnecessary closure of special schools, and remove the bias towards inclusion.” (Cabinet Office, 2010)

In 2010, David Cameron set out an intention to ‘end the bias towards inclusive education’ in the Conservative Party manifesto for the forthcoming general election. Following the election, the coalition government adopted this aim, as seen in the quote above. Professor Katherine Runswick-Cole (Sheffield University) described at the time how this was an attempt to ‘re-narrate the special education agenda’ by implying that there had previously been a ‘bias towards inclusion’, which would be addressed ‘by putting forward a “reasonable and sensible” solution to what is seen by some to be the “problem of inclusion”’. She argued, in the British Journal of Special Education 2011, that:

“Although there may have been an inclusive education policy rhetoric, this rhetoric is rooted in conceptual incongruities which, rather than promoting inclusion, undermine an inclusive approach to education”. (Runswick-Cole, K. 2011: Time to end the bias towards inclusive education?)

In reality, there never had been a meaningful bias towards inclusion.

Fast toward to 2023, and inclusion is a hot topic within the government’s recently published SEND & Alternative Provision Improvement Plan: Right support, Right place, Right time. According to the introduction, this plan, alongside the Schools White Paper, sets out ‘bold proposals to deliver a generational change for a more system, but the aim is to use this system to create a more inclusive society too (page 7).

At the heart of the government’s plan is new ‘National Standards’, which will ‘set out clear expectations for the types of support that should be ordinarily available in mainstream settings’ (page 5).

Alongside these National Standards, each local area will be required to ‘create evidence-based local inclusion plans that will set out how the needs of children and Young people in the local area will be met’ and which will be used to ‘provide a tailored list of suitable settings’ for children, Young people and their parents to choose from (page 10). They also plan to ‘publish a local and national inclusion dashboard’ which will give greater transparency of local performance, inform decision-making and apparently drive 'self-improvement across the system with ongoing updates and iterations in response to user feedback’ (page 12). The role of alternative provision is clarified, to ensure it is seen as a temporary solution offering preventative work and reintegration back into mainstream schools (page 13). And finally, best practice from areas that have inclusive provision will be shared more widely (page 13). Does this mean that there is a renewed (or new?!) bias towards inclusion taking place here? Sadly, I do not think so. I think that the only thing we are seeing is an increase in education policy rhetoric, with no meaningful