‘Special Needs’ Are Out of Control
Half of all extra schools spending in the last decade has gone on special needs and three-quarters of England’s councils face bankruptcy over the costs. As parents chase extra support for their children, Send is out of control, says Zachary Marsh in the Spectator. Here’s an excerpt.
As students go back to school this September, headteachers across the country are being forced to confront a system in crisis. While children reconnect with their friends and swap stories of the summer holidays, an ever-increasing number will have a little ‘S’ next to their name on the register – for Send, or Special Educational Needs and Disabilities.
Startlingly, one in five students in England are now recorded as having Send. Policy Exchange’s new report, ‘Out of Control‘, finds that the number of children given Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) – designed to support those with the most severe needs that schools cannot normally provide for – has increased by 83% since 2015. As a former teacher, I saw this spiralling crisis first hand.
This has come at a tremendous cost. Half of all extra schools spending in the last decade has gone on Send. £11 billion will be spent this year – with taxis for children with Send set to cost more than £1 billion alone by the end of the decade. The system is at breaking point, with three-quarters of England’s councils facing bankruptcy over Send costs.
The popular consensus that the unstoppable rise of Send among our children is the product of better awareness and diagnosis has blinded policy-making for too long. In reality, while mental health and neurodivergence remain fundamental challenges for many young people, the system increasingly draws in many who do not need a label and do not benefit from having one – at terrible human and economic cost.
Child development is messy. Yet the desire of parents and teachers to ensure young people are happy and healthy has too often spiralled into an urge to problematise that runs counter to children’s interests. We used to be comfortable accepting that sometimes children might feel down or upset, or struggle to keep up with their peers in class for a period. Now widespread concern about mental health means that if you feel anxious, you must have anxiety. If you get restless in lessons, you must be struggling with ADHD. Yet a 2018 study at Cambridge University found that 25% of children diagnosed with Send were in fact age-typical.
Worse still is an incentive structure that encourages families to seek out labels for their children in return for a host of benefits. Middle-class dinner party conversations now turn on what diagnoses will unlock extra time in exams. Send-based exam adjustments are twice as common in the independent sector as in state schools. The unlimited funds that can be unlocked by EHCPs have started an arms race of parents wanting to access more support for their children – crowding out those with genuine needs.
“We must scrap the perverse incentives, insist on good evidence and address over-medicalisation,” says Zachary.
Worth reading in full.
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And of course any of these labels means access to the shangri-la of the Benefits system.
ADHD ? Oh lovely, straight on to PIP. Severe is it? Taxis to and from school, free uniforms, school meals. DWP the till that gives but never takes, and these are lifetime Benefits. Ain’t life grand.
Don’t forget the ‘autism’ mate. That will double it. Autism, a ‘disease’ that never affects children when they are at home watching TV or playing on their xbox or looking at porn on the internet. Funny that it only becomes obvious when they get in the class room, and cant be bothered to concentrate, have a strop then fake something.
”autism” is not a disease. It’s often referred to as a disorder. Often in my experience that’s an appropriate word, though in some it seems more like a different way of looking at the world which presents challenges but you are still highly functional- you just find the world a bit baffling and the world feels likewise. A bit like being a Covid sceptic.
Autism or whatever you want to call it is definitely real, but that doesn’t mean everyone with a diagnosis is genuinely autistic.
I agree but only about 10% might be truly autistic. I see autistic as people with problems that cannot be deskt with easily and is life changing. Someone who can hardly speak, in a wheelchair, spasms etc. Autistic in the definition that is used by social services is someone who is difficult, stubborn or uncooperative. Like my sisters youngest son and his offspring.
Drug taking parents, young kids locked in their bedroom for the weekend, alcohol abuse. Etc. Box ticking locks people into a limited life. Drugs the same. Kids who would thrive with good parents are labelled autistics as it saves social services from actually having go for what they are paid to do.
Proper definition and actual contact nd soci as l visits might help.
It’s a joke what we have now. Self diagnosis! Are you sick, yes I’m sick now give me money.
I don’t remember any autistic kids when I was young. Where do they come from?
Perhaps we don’t remember from when we were young because they were in “special schools”, though probably not all of them so yes something has changed – either the definition or the prevalence (some people think there are external factors like food and vaccines – I tend not to have but try to keep an open mind).
It’s a spectrum. Profound autism seems to make life in our world very difficult. High functioning autistic people manage better, but from my personal experience they are still autistic and in certain respects think and process the world quite differently to non-autists. Whether it’s helpful to anyone to label those people in a certain way is an interesting debate with pros and cons. My view is that we can all label ourselves, or other people can, in certain ways, but that neither defines nor limits us – it just is. But of course not everyone thinks like that – people (the person themselves and those around them) fixate which is unhelpful.
Both my children’s schools in SW London were rife with this. Parents seeking diagnoses then contextual offers from universities. One other observation though, there appears to be a particularly high percentage incidence among minority groups. It would be interesting to see a full breakdown at both the primary and secondary schools. Perhaps it is a pull factor for immigration, ie in Britain a diagnosis leads to all sorts of special arrangements and DEI benefits, whereas, in the vast majority of countries, especially in the developing world, a diagnosis would mean opportunities and career over.
Unfortunately I was a school board governor in Chiswick for a while. 80% of our discussions were on ‘special needs’ – why? Most of the budget is tied in some way to SN. It is ridiculous. I was the only way to expostulate my irritation at this. What about the 99% of students who are not SN I would ask? (to ridicule etc). SN impacts budgets, the more SN you display, the more money you get…..
So many people now seem to consider themselves “neurodivergent” that I would say they are actually the norm and it’s the rest of us in the minority. I have plenty of my own issues re. anxiety and what used to be called “shyness” and I have no doubt I could get my own diagnosis if I wanted to. Ditto my daughter, who is thankfully home educated. But I just consider myself to have a particular personality type, shared by many others, and it’s nice if people are generally understanding but it’s not a disorder or a special need.
I was idly watching an episode of Dragon’s Den the other night and a kid and his dad came on, looked, spoke and acted perfectly normally in a situation which would turn many others (including me) into a nervous wreck. But the first words out of both of their mouths were “I’m neurodivergent!”, FFS.
These days everyone has to be “special” – unable to grasp that they are nonentities like the vast majority around them. Just another form of the permanent sense of “victimhood” that has grown and grown.