We can't let The Government blame SEND parents for the state of our council's finances
The Ink Education Focus
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This is our monthly ‘Education focus’ edition which will normally appear on the second Thursday of every month. The first Thursday is ‘Business’, and the third Thursday of the month is ‘Heritage’, and the final Thursday is ‘Food & Drink’.
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Are pushy parents of SEND children The Government’s new scapegoat for our failing councils?
In recent weeks a new narrative seems to be forming from the mouthpieces of Central Government that the people who are most to blame for the state of our council’s dire finances, including Swindon’s, are pushy parents who have the loudest voices to get their SEND (special educational needs & disability) children the education they deserve. According to The Government, it is these parents, and solely them, who have been bleeding the country’s local authorities dry.
By Jamie Hill
It beggars belief really.
A narrative is being formed that it’s pushy parents trying to get their SEND children the best possible education and the best opportunities, who are to blame for the buckling of local authority finances.
Obviously it’s an election year and we, at The Ink, are very aware that the Government especially will be trying to pin the blame anywhere but themselves when it comes to their own shortcomings. But blaming the parents of vulnerable children does take the biscuit as to how low they can stoop.
According to Education Secretary Gillian Keegan in a Guardian report, parental appeals against council decisions to refuse SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) support – 96% of which were upheld – amount to “lots of parents taking councils to tribunal to get … normally very expensive independent schools.” She’s essentially saying that these costly tribunals and the increased cost of giving them a proper education is down to the parents being too pushy.
And if that wasn’t enough Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove added his two cents’ worth that local authorities have understandable difficulty distinguishing between “deserving” families and “those with the loudest voices, or the deepest pockets, or the most persistent lawyers.”
Over at the Sunday Times a few weeks ago, columnist Robert Colvile wrote that the financial chaos affecting so many councils was down to rising school transport costs and the increased numbers of EHCPs.
An EHCP stands for an Education Health and Care Plan and Mr Colvile goes on to describe them as the equivalent of Willy Wonka’s Golden Tickets - “If you have one, the council is legally obliged to bend over backwards on your behalf, at the expense of everyone else.”
At The Ink we have put together quite a few stories about the state of the SEND system in Swindon, so for The Government to start to put the blame on desperate parents who are just trying to get the best for their children is pretty hypocritical, especially when the blame for most local authorities’ financial woes sits firmly on their own shoulders because of a sharp decrease in funding from Central Government over the past 14 years. At least they’ve stopped short of blaming the children themselves, but I wouldn’t put it past them.