Pepe Di’Iasio, General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, comments on the Education Select Committee’s report, Solving the SEND crisis.
“The Education Select Committee’s report is very clear – the SEND system requires major reform, and this cannot be done on the cheap.
“We welcome the committee’s recommendation of national standards and stronger accountability systems to hold schools to account for delivering inclusive practice.
“This is what school and college leaders already strive to achieve, but they are hampered by shortages of funding, resources, and specialist staff.
“School and college leaders want to work hand-in-hand with parents to deliver brilliant provision for children and young people with SEND.
“But the government’s planned reforms will struggle to achieve their objectives unless they are backed up with sufficient investment and resources.
“We welcome also the Education Select Committee’s call for the government to rethink its post-16 compulsory resits policy for GCSE English and maths.
“This policy is clearly not serving the best interests of the many students who retake these exams only to fall short of the grade 4 benchmark once again and are left utterly demoralised by the experience.”