Carrie Grant

It makes sense to invest in it.

It's a little bit complex, I think.

Obviously, mainstream schools should be as inclusive as they can possibly be.

If a child can access a mainstream education with some additional support, then that is what should happen.

The problem is that it's kind of being presented as an instead of to specialist education at the same time that they announced education.

that plan, they also announced that they were pulling the plug on a very long list of planned specialist schools across the country that have been in the works, some of them for up to three years.

Local authorities have been waiting for these schools to be properly funded and built, and now they're not going to happen.

And as for the training, obviously welcome.

It's kind of baffling that it doesn't already happen, but

What is coming out of the government at the moment seems to be suggesting that schools are going to be given significantly more responsibility for not just understanding SEND, but for identifying it, for deciding what help children get, what level of help they get.

And this amount of money, this amount of training is not going to equip teachers to do that.

And I've spoken to so many teachers in the last few weeks who've just said, I'm not qualified for this.

I can't do this effectively.

And that's before you even get to what I think is one of the biggest problems with the mainstream inclusion plan.

And that is

conflicting needs of children so if you think about all of the disabled children that live within a three mile radius of your nearest mainstream school you'll have autistic ADHD you'll also have physical disabilities visual impairments hearing impairments um

medical needs and this money is to go towards its capital money so it's to go towards building units building additional rooms it's not to staff them or provide that so they're going to have what a couple of

additional rooms to house all of the disabled children from the local area.

So potentially four to 12 year olds with any possible disability and teachers are expected to manage that.

The logistics of it do not work.