Schools are using “spurious reasons” to prevent pupils with special education needs from returning to school, according to an expert in the sector.

Schools were using risk assessments as a way of excluding pupils with SEND, they said. 

Ali Fiddy, chief executive of the Independent Provider of Special Education Advice, said: “It’s important to recognise that children and young people with SEND are not vulnerable by virtue of having SEND, they are vulnerable by virtue of the ways the system treats them.”

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She told the Commons’ Education Select Committee that she had seen “the risk assessment process being used really as a blanket excuse for not meeting the needs of children and young people and not having them in their educational settings, with either no reasons being given, or quite spurious reasons around for example, well ‘your child isn’t capable of social distancing’, or ‘your child won’t wash their hands without prompting’.”

“And in fact, we had people where a parent raised exactly that point - their child is in Reception, that’s clearly not an issue that’s unique to a child in Reception who has SEND.”