Last Friday, Schools Week ran an interview about the SEND system with Tony McArdle, an adviser to the Department for Education. It wasn’t a pleasant read – but it was an important one. The public doesn’t often hear from McArdle, and he offered an important glimpse into the future of the SEND system.
However, while McArdle is right to say that the SEND system “manifestly doesn’t work any more”, he’s wrong in his diagnosis and his framing of risk. We have deep concerns about the SEND review’s direction of travel. It’s largely been carried out behind closed doors by the same cadre of leaders and advisers who blithely drove the SEND system over a cliff pre-pandemic.
These leaders have concluded that we – families and schools – are the main problem with the SEND system.
