The government’s plan for improving support for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities will place a “massive demand” on schools, a senior Department for Education official has said.
Tim Coulson, director general of the DfE’s regions group, was addressing school leaders in the week that the government set out major SEND reforms alongside its schools White Paper.
Mr Coulson said the reforms would require the system to “shift gear” and rethink how mainstream schools support children with SEND.
Speaking at the National Education Leaders Conference, Mr Coulson said the White Paper set “huge expectations” for schools, trusts and local authorities, particularly around inclusion.
“This is a massive demand,” he said. “This is a huge expectation on the system. This isn’t easy for schools to do. This isn’t easy for trusts. This isn’t easy for local authorities.”
He said the reforms were designed to build on the strengths of the school system, but acknowledged that outcomes for pupils with SEND and those from disadvantaged backgrounds remained weak.
Restoring confidence in mainstream
The former Unity Schools Partnership CEO acknowledged that many parents had lost confidence in mainstream provision, with rising numbers seeking specialist placements through education, health and care plans (EHCPs).
“We need to change that,” he said, warning against children travelling long distances to specialist schools and becoming disconnected from their local communities.
Under the government’s reforms, EHCPs will be reserved for pupils with the most complex needs, with mainstream schools expected to take greater responsibility for supporting the majority of children with SEND.
Mr Coulson said winning the “hearts and minds” of school leaders and parents would be critical, adding that accountability frameworks and trust standards would increasingly focus on inclusion.
“There are big expectations on the system,” he said, “and it will be leaders like you who make this real.”
No route set out for trust ambition
Mr Coulson was also pressed by Tes on how the government plans to fulfil its ambition for all schools to be part of “strong” multi-academy trusts - a central aspect of the White Paper.
Asked what would define a “strong” MAT, including whether size thresholds would be introduced and whether the policy implied widespread consolidation, Mr Coulson said there would be no requirement for small trusts to merge.
Mr Coulson accepted that the academy system had grown “sporadically” and “unsystematically”, with trusts often geographically dispersed.
DfE officials will engage with responsible bodies in the summer to explore how the school trust system could be more “strategic”, he said, but stressed that the government would not impose a top-down solution.
“One thing you can guarantee is that you won’t get a school to move into a trust if it’s told where it has to go,” he said, adding that there was “no one in charge of telling a school where it should end up”.
Instead, he said the government wanted to encourage the system to organise itself, arguing that even high-performing standalone schools could struggle to meet the growing demands being placed on them without the support of a group.
He suggested that future trust standards and inspection frameworks would help shape what “strong” meant in practice, with a greater emphasis on trusts being rooted in their communities and on driving inclusion across their schools.
However, Mr Coulson stopped short of setting out a clear pathway for achieving the ambition for all schools to be in trusts, saying the reforms were intended to be carried out “with the school system”, rather than imposed on it.
You can now get the UK’s most-trusted source of education news in a mobile app. Get Tes magazine on iOS and on Android
