Schools White Paper Proposals to Reform SEND Provision: Our Response

   
We were encouraged by the proposals in the Schools White Paper to support more children with special educational needs within mainstream settings. The announcement of a £1.6bn fund to be made directly available to schools to become more inclusive is a welcome step forward.

You can read a summary of the major changes on our sister company, Real Training’s website here.

Notably, however, there was little direct mention of specialist literacy teachers or dyslexia per se in the proposals. The continual shortage of highly trained dyslexia and other special learning difficulty (SpLD) professionals is an ongoing concern, and for the Experts at Hand service to be successful, it is our view that this should include improved early access to specialist literacy teachers. Many of these were trained with funding from the Labour Government 17 years ago in the wake of the Rose Review (2009) and constitute a large resource. Findings from the No to Failure (2009) study indicate that literacy interventions designed and supervised by dyslexia specialists effectively mitigate long-term reading and writing challenges. Furthermore, the research highlights that early intervention offers the best outcomes for pupils as well as representing the most cost-efficient strategy for schools.

Complementing the support offered by qualified specialists, all teachers and TAs could benefit from a better general understanding of dyslexia. It is our hope that this will be included in the £200m SEND training package and in the reformed ITT.

In January, the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Dyslexia outlined the urgent need for a National Dyslexia Strategy in the UK to support the estimated 6.3 million people living with dyslexia, including an estimated 900,000 children in schools.

We support the aims of this group, particularly the target of universal early identification and support, and hope that the government will incorporate the recommendations into the next phase of its SEND reform strategy.