The forthcoming schools White Paper is being framed as a moment of renewal for a system that is widely acknowledged to be under strain, with a particular focus on special educational needs and disabilities.
But with one in five children now identified as needing some level of SEND support, the question is no longer whether reform is needed but whether we are still defining the problem correctly.
A figure of 20 per cent does not describe a narrow group of children with discrete educational needs. It describes a generation growing up in a context where schools have become the most consistent point of support for challenges that stretch far beyond the classroom.
Yet national Department for Education policy continues to approach SEND as a siloed educational issue, rather than a reflection of some of the wider developmental, social and family pressures.
Taking a wider approach to SEND
The same pattern can be seen across a number of other areas. Across multiple types of need, teachers and leaders have adapted, intervened earlier, built specialist provision and strengthened relationships with families in order to help young people thrive.
We don’t see recognition of that shift happening in policy terms.
So the question needs to be asked: does the DfE need to return to being the Department for Children?
If it did, how might things work better?
If we look at SEND, we can see how not having a broader outlook at the DfE negatively impacts our ability to be successful in schools.
In Broad Horizons Education Trust, we have responded to SEND need by developing specialist provision within mainstream schools, shaped by local context, so that children can receive support without being removed from their community.
We deliberately draw on the expertise of our special schools to inform mainstream practice, ensuring that relationships with children and families are not an add-on but integral to how support is designed and delivered. We work closely with the local authority to align education with wider services wherever possible.
But this has not been strategically put in place through policy, nor has it been truly resourced. Even if the White Paper reframes expectations so that this is the norm, the department has no real power to create the conditions so that this model can not only be put in place but also the necessary cross-expertise collaboration can happen to make it successful.
Cross-department working
Or what about children living in poverty? Many schools have set up their own foodbanks and other interventions, but again there is no framework for how best to do this nor resource or broader agency support to maximise the impact.
And what about the phrase of the moment: early intervention? This rarely fits neatly into educational or social care silos. Much of what schools do every day is, in effect, filling a social care gap before it becomes a crisis.
It is no accident that some of the most promising responses to this challenge are emerging outside of formal government structures. Initiatives such as the Reach Cradle-to-Career Partnership, with which we are working, recognise that as trusted institutions, schools have a part to play in creating local partnerships.
Despite our best attempts at collaboration and innovation, it often feels as though schools and local authorities alike are having to swim hard against the tide.
Government intervention
If the DfE were to think of itself, first and foremost, as the Department for Children, this would change.
Government would be forced into much clearer cross-departmental working, with the Department for Children having strategic oversight that brings in the other departments as required.
The Treasury, meanwhile, would have a much clearer remit (and political imperative) to fund childhood as a whole and look at the best investments for that, rather than having departments compete with often overlapping or contradictory policy proposals.
And a school’s place in the overall vision for childhood would be more clearly defined. Schools would not have to operate as substitutes for other services but as the natural first point of contact for early intervention and a gateway to - not a provider of - early help services.
Without this shift, it seems very difficult to imagine that the White Paper will have the impact required. If it merely repackages the expectation that schools will absorb need that sits between education, health and social care, then it will offer reassurance without relief. And for a system already stretched to its limits, that is not reform. It is displacement.
Owen Jenkins is CEO of Broad Horizons Education Trust
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