UK government has reportedly planned to remodel the Send (special educational needs and disabilities) system in a recently issued green paper. Mainstream schools in the country will now need to change their practice and culture to become more child-inclusive for special educational disabilities and needs.

These plans include proposals to augment responsibility and increase earlier intervention to assure the fulfillment of the needs of children in local settings. The green paper will also propose new national standards across health, education, and care to effectively support children through Send as well as a legal requirement for councils to issue inclusion plans to offer greater clarity regarding the accountability across various sectors.

Among the proposals is the inclusion dashboard that will help parents in understanding the availability in their area. In addition, digitized, simplified education, care, and health plan for those children with the utmost need to curb redundancy and aid parents select from a list of relevant placements.

The proposals also comprise plans for a new national model for tariffs and banding for children needing different levels of support to help the system in becoming financially stable.

Under the current regulation, parents often must deal with lengthy disputes to secure the right child provision, in a heavily adversarial and bureaucratic system. The provision of specialists is out of the area in some cases, leading to hundreds of thousands of pounds for children with the most needs.

Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi cited ahead of the publication that the government intends to cede the postcode lottery of poor accountability and uncertainty that exists for many families, augment assurance in the system throughout the board as well as increase specialist and local mainstream education to provide a better choice to parents.

The long-awaited green paper of the government comes at the termination of the cross-government review that was launched in 2019. The publication will be followed by a consultation of thirteen weeks.

Source credit:

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/mar/29/government-sets-out-plans-to-overhaul-special-educational-needs-system