The right to a mainstream education

The right to a mainstream education is enshrined in law in Section 33 of the Children and Families Act 2014.

(2) In a case within section 39(5) or 40(2), the local authority must secure that the plan provides for the child or young person to be educated in a maintained nursery school, mainstream school or mainstream post-16 institution, unless that is incompatible with—

(a)the wishes of the child’s parent or the young person, or

(b)the provision of efficient education for others

This is all well and good, and there is no doubt that promoting an inclusive education system within an inclusive society is laudable, however the reality on the ground is somewhat different. Increasingly children who struggle with mainstream school are being denied alternative placements in the name of inclusion, even though those mainstream placements are unable to meet their needs.

The issue of course, is that in order to cater for the diverse needs of our most vulnerable children, mainstream schools need to be properly funded. In the absence of sufficient funding, those schools are ill equipped to meet the variety of needs that are generally found in any subset of the population. Consequently we have parents who are fighting for their children to get access to the limited specialist provision that is available, a process that is lengthy, time consuming and costly for both families and local authorities.

If we really want to have an inclusive education system, we need to re-think the very structure of our education system. Mainstream schools, subject to government league tables and floor levels are increasingly ‘persuading’ parents to find alternative provision for their child that is struggling. This is neither inclusive nor legal, and yet there are too many stories of where it is happening for us to continue to put our head in the sand.

So today, I joined a group of educationalists, parents and councillors who marched to 3 Sanctuary Buildings, the home of the Department for Education, to present a petition comprising over 34,000 signatures. This petition asks Damien Hinds to admit there is a crisis in SEN funding and to invest money to put that right.

The irony of the address ‘Sanctuary Buildings’ was not lost on me, as my son is one of the fortunate ones to have found sanctuary outside of mainstream.

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