As this is my first summary since the turn of the year, I thought I’d give a month-by-month synopsis of some of the events that have occurred so far. Recently, they have come thick and fast, with the SEND and alternative provision improvement plan finally getting off the ground, to the extent that I’m planning to put together a separate a piece on the improvement plan’s progress.
While I was piecing together the rest of the information that might be useful, Robert Halfon announced that he will be one of many MPs stepping down at the general election. A former chair of the Education Select Committee and currently a minister at the Department for Education (DfE), he has referred to his imminent departure in the following terms:
‘As I move towards stepping down at the general election, I am reminded of what Gandalf said to Frodo Baggins after the defeat of Sauron in the Lord of the Rings – “I am with you at the present … but soon I shall not be … my time is over: it is no longer my task to set things to rights, nor to help folk to do so”.’
Robert was born with a form of cerebral palsy known as spastic diplegia. Doctors had warned his father that he might never be able to walk, live independently, or go to university, let alone make his mark as a politician.
