Introduction

This chapter considers the assumptions and implications of policy developments in multi-agency working over at least the last 40 years for the support of children and young people with disabilities. We look at four policy strands: that of post-Warnock statutory SEN assessment, inclusive education, the Every Child Matters (ECM) agenda and the era of Education, Health and Care plans. Our focus is on education, and although the actual policies referred to would vary in other contexts, the overall argument will, we claim, apply to all. For most of the last four decades there has been a constantly renewed call to improve multi-agency working and, more recently, far-reaching structural changes to integrate services. However, it is questionable whether this has been for the benefit of children and young people with disabilities. Additionally, in the last decade, as multi-agency working has become more of a taken for granted, the trend of considering how to improve processes has diminished. We make the case that problems in multi-agency working have been repeatedly conceptualised in ways that do not tell the whole story and therefore do not make it easy for improvements to happen.

Multi-agency working has been understood in terms of ‘what works’, looking at systems and communication, rather than in terms of the complex politics around professional roles and relationships. The perspectives of parents and young people on how services should work with them has been ignored or ineffectively included.

The rise of ‘unofficial’ exclusions

Formal exclusion is a preventative or punitive sanction whereby a child or young person is removed from an educational setting for reasons connected to misbehaviour or rule breaking. Headteachers in England can lawfully suspend a pupil from school for a fixed period and, in extreme instances, remove them from the school altogether via a permanent exclusion.

Excluded children and young people are often the most vulnerable children and young people. They are twice as likely to be in the care of the state, four times more likely to have grown up in poverty, seven times more likely to have special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), and ten times more likely to have recognised mental health problems (Gill, 2017).

Pupils with SEND account for a disproportionate number of suspensions and permanent exclusions. Official data show that rates for both types of exclusion have returned to pre-pandemic levels, with suspension rates around four times greater, and permanent exclusions about five times greater, for pupils with SEND, compared with those without SEND (DfE, 2024a). Separate data indicate exclusions for autistic pupils alone increased by 59 per cent between 2011 and 2016, compared with an overall exclusion rate of 4 per cent over the same period (Ambitious About Autism, 2018).

Schools cannot use formal exclusion procedures to remove pupils for reasons unrelated to breaches of behaviour. Yet in recent years, England has seen the emergence of a shadow system of unofficial exclusion. These

One of the few things that everyone in the education world agrees on is that the special educational needs and disabilities system is broken. Parents are deeply frustrated at having to fight for their children to have access to necessary resources.

Mainstream schools feel unable to provide the support they know pupils need, due to a lack of funding. Special schools are in an even tougher financial position. Many local authorities have been plunged into debt they have no route to paying off, which risks the financial health of the whole council.

Central government knows this situation is unsustainable. Gillian Keegan, the last Conservative education secretary, called it a ‘lose, lose, lose’ system. Her new Labour replacement, Bridget Phillipson, has firmly agreed with this assessment. But solutions are not obvious, or at least not affordable ones, given the straightened times.

It feels like a lot of important questions – many of which are highlighted in this valuable guide – have been ignored for a long time. Not least, why have we seen such a substantial rise in the number of young people with certain conditions, that has driven huge year-on-year cost increases. This applies to conditions like autism and ADHD but also broader behavioural challenges, and mental illnesses like anxiety and depression.

There has been a remarkable lack of curiosity about these trends among policymakers, perhaps because there are no easy or obvious answers. But without halting, and ideally reversing these trends, or at least applying different approaches to managing them, it is hard to see how any government can get a grip. They tie into a wider array of problems affecting the most vulnerable young people, including rising poverty and an increase in instances of abusive or neglectful parenting.

Introduction

The past 30 years have seen significant progress with regard to the inclusion of disabled students in higher education. Part 4 of the Disability Discrimination Act, passed in 1995, was amended by the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001, which inserted new provisions with regard to the duties of schools and other educational establishments to disabled students. The Disability Discrimination Act was subsequently incorporated into the Equality Act 2010. Since 2001, universities have been obliged to avoid discrimination against disabled students by making reasonable adjustments and avoiding less favourable treatment. From this point, disabled students had enforceable rights to reasonable levels of support, rather than being dependent on the goodwill of staff and students. As we discuss below, participation rates of disabled students in higher education have improved rapidly and this group now make up around 15 per cent of all UK higher education students, and 17.5 per cent of first year, full-time, first degree students (HESA, 2022). Nonetheless, many problems remain, including unequal rates of participation by students with different types of impairment; higher drop-out rates and poorer degree outcomes for some groups; difficulties in accessing support; and challenges relating to social and academic inclusion. As reported in earlier research (Riddell et al, 2005a; Fuller et al, 2009; Hector, 2020), once admitted to a particular course at college or university, disabled students still have to engage in a daily struggle to access buildings, course materials and examinations. Developing friendships, building wider social networks and negotiating identity may also prove hugely challenging.

When the Children and Families Act was published in 2014 it was described as the biggest reform to child welfare legislation in 30 years. It set a strong vision for a system which put children and families at the centre and was built on joined up services which focused on delivering the best outcomes. There is no doubt that was its intent. So how did we lose this?

Partly those joined up services changed, the reorganisation of health services and schools had a fundamental impact on structure and accountability, local authorities also entered a period of austerity and then there was a pandemic.

One of the unintended impacts of the changing education system was the creation of a hostile environment for children and young people with SEND. The previous government’s focus on narrow attainment measures reinforced by an attendance and behaviour approach which did not recognise an increasing number of children and young people struggling to find a confident and secure environment at school, led to a system where children who could not conform where increasingly excluded.

The SEND system also acquired its own identity and bureaucracy, leading to an ‘othering’ of children with SEND, a view that there were children, and then a separate category of SEND children, where the same understanding of valuing childhood and achievement did not apply. If we add to this the fundamental impact of the pandemic on young people and the broader understanding of the impact of autism on girls and young women, and the rising prevalence of mental health needs, a system which needed greater flexibility became increasingly inflexible.

In 2008, Miller, Cobb and Simpson wrote about the issues between assessment and attainment for children and young people who are deaf, have vision impairment (VI) or multi-sensory impairment (MSI). They examined the implications of an assessment system in England which effectively pulls in two directions.

While much remains challenging in the current system of assessment and attainment for children and young people with sensory impairment (SI), in 2023, what they achieve academically, one could argue, only gives us a small insight into their experiences in education.

This update will examine previous assertions made by Miller, Cobb and Simpson, including original extracts, in relation to the current situation. Additionally, we take a broader contextual look at education policy and changes and a glimpse at the holistic education experience for children and young people with SI.

Original chapter extracts

The following extract is taken from Chapter 8 in the first edition of this book, by Olga Miller, Rory Cobb and Paul Simpson.