Any good parent, carer or educator will always strive to ensure that the young person within their supervision achieves their full potential. They would not limit their hopes or dreams. Instead, they would do everything in their power to support and encourage that child to fulfil their life goals. Children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) should not be treated any differently.

In an ideal world, the voices of young people with SEND would be the dominant driver behind any provision for their future prospects. Unfortunately, the reality is that this does not happen as often as it should.

Recent changes to the SEND Code of Practice have improved the provision that children with SEND receive in the early stages of their lives. However, it is what comes after this that needs to be addressed, so that children with SEND - who will later become adults with SEND - have equal opportunities to be integrated into and valued within the workforce and wider society.

This is why I helped to create the Preparing for Adulthood from the Earliest Years review guide (PfA Review) for Whole School SEND.

Education is about ‘building citizens’

The PfA Review is a free tool to support schools in preparing children and young people with SEND for the next stage of their learning and development into adulthood. It has been developed through a collaboration between the London Leadership Strategy; the Council for Disabled Children; a group of schools brought together by Swiss Cottage School and Barham Primary School in north-west London; parents and young people in the Whole School SEND Consortium.

The PfA Review sits alongside the SEND Review, the Teaching Assistant Deployment Review and the SEND Reflection Framework, which together form a package of free frameworks to help schools review and improve their SEND provision.

I passionately believe that the PfA Review tool will provide educational settings with the focus they need to ensure young people with SEND are being equipped with life goals, life experiences and responsibilities that will allow them to make a successful transition into adulthood. It provides explicit direction to help educational providers reflect and self-evaluate, pinpointing strengths and areas for development.

The education sector is currently inundated with national standards to meet. The challenge of meeting the needs of all children and young people is greater than it ever has been. However, the core of education has always been about building citizens who can make a positive contribution to society. With this in mind, if every child truly matters, then we must begin to prioritise the futures of young people with SEND.

The dawn of sustainable change for the next generation of adults with SEND is well overdue. The time to act is now.

Jayshree Thakore is trainee headteacher at Barham Primary School in north-west London. You can download all the Whole School SEND review guides here

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