Charlotte Leslie addressing the Conservative Party Conference

Charlotte Leslie co-authored the Bow Group report “SEN: The Truth about Inclusion”

Executive Summary

The Special Educational Needs debate has long been dominated by the inclusion –exclusion debate. This paper recognises that inclusion in mainstream school is good for many children with SEN and does not seek to enter into a debate of ideology, but simply to reveal the facts: Since the Labour Government came into power in 1997 and began to implement its policy of inclusion we find that:

On Statements and Special School Places:

• Around 9000 places at special schools have been lost
• The number of statements and assessments issued for children with SEN have fallen by over a third

On Truancy:

• Children on ‘School Action Plus’ schemes, which are replacing statements are twice as likely as other children with SEN to truant.
• A fifth of all children of School Action Plus are persistent Truants.

On Exclusions:

• Special Educational Needs pupils make up the majority of pupils expelled from school at 67%, though they comprise only 17% of the school population
• SEN pupils are more likely to be suspended more than once in a year. Out of the 78,600 pupils who were excluded more than once in a single year, half (49.7%) were SEN pupils.
• For the first time, this year over half of all suspensions from secondary school are pupils with Special Educational Needs (55%)

On SEN and Pupil Referral Units (PRUs):

• Over half of pupils are suspended from PRUs —nearly three quarters have Special Educational Needs
• Two thirds (66%) of all SEN pupils at PRUs end up being suspended
• Special Educational Needs pupils in Pupil Referral Units has risen by 70% since 1997

On Parental choice:

• Around 83% of the increase in Independent School numbers over the last ten years are children with SEN.
• Over half all appeals are against a local authority’s decision not to assess or statement a child.

We conclude that whilst inclusion in mainstream school is very beneficial for some children with SEN, these figures are a compelling argument for an urgent systemic review of the Government’s ‘inclusion’ policy, particularly focusing on the failures of the School Action Plus scheme and support David Cameron’s call for a moratorium on the closure of special schools until a review of the statementing process has taken place.