For years, the independent schooling sector has been the safety net for families the state system couldn't support. Now, new DfE reforms are coming. Will they give parents more control, or take it away?
AFIS Founding Patron, James Wilding's latest post explores why we must fight for real inclusion, not just a return to the "inclusion in name only" of the past.
James Wilding BSc FRSA FCCT
Academic Principal of Claires Court School and AFIS Patron
In my recent conversations with the local authority, involving Department for Education advice, and with national reports highlighting the issues, it has become increasingly clear that we are standing at a critical crossroads for children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities.
(SEND) provision in England; The government’s proposed reforms, centering on "mainstream inclusion by design," are being presented as a fresh solution to a system that everyone agrees is broken. You can hear one such example here, in which a child’s school demonstrably breaks the Equality Act with its attendance reward system. For those of us who have lived through the cycles of educational policy, there is a haunting sense of déjà vu.
The "new" vision focuses on creating 60,000 new places within mainstream schools—supported by dedicated "inclusion bases"—to bridge the gap between general classrooms and specialist provision. While the rhetoric of inclusion is noble, we must ask:
Inclusion into what?
If we are not careful, these reforms risk returning us to the pre-2014 landscape, a time before the Children and Families Act replaced "statements" with Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs).
In that era, “statementing” effectively stripped parents of their primary agency. The responsibility for a child’s education was offloaded onto Local Authorities (LAs), who often moved with glacial slowness, frequently denying schools the specific resources required to make inclusion work. For many families, the only way to "regather control" was a binary, painful choice: either stay in a state mainstream setting without adequate support or "opt out" entirely to fund their child’s education in the independent sector.
Over the last decade, the independent sector has quietly become the safety net for this systemic failure. As state resources were squeezed—with high-needs deficits now reaching billions—it was the private sector that picked up the children the state felt "unable" to educate. Between 2016 and 2024, the number of pupils with SEND in independent schools grew by nearly 70%, even as the overall population remained stable.
We didn't just provide a choice; we provided a lifeline.
We now have a narrow window—perhaps only three years—to emphasize that true inclusion is not just a change of seating plan or a repurposed spare classroom. If the DfE’s reforms simply mandate "inclusion" without the massive, front-loaded funding and specialist expertise required, they will merely recreate the old traps. Parents will once again find themselves waiting for assessments that never come, while their children sit in "inclusive" environments that lack the specialized pedagogy to help them thrive.
For independent schools, our role in the next 36 months is vital. We must demonstrate that our success with SEND pupils isn't just about smaller classes; it’s about the early identification and bespoke, rapid intervention that the state sector is currently designed to delay. If the "new solution" is just the old "statementing" logic in a different wrapper, families will once again be forced into the same impossible choices. Inclusion is a philosophy, but without resources and agency, it is just a form of abandonment. We must ensure the DfE understands the difference before the door closes on another generation.
Further listening - Dr Jason Lang on his daughter's experience in school. https://schl.cc:443/i1 Stories like this are heart-breaking, but so important for people to hear. “As a parent or carer you feel like you've been stabbed in the heart when you see your child feel so hurt. It’s disgraceful and intolerable, and it needs to stop now.”
#adhd #autism #send #asn #scottishparliament #parliament #strongertogether #championingparentalchoice #fairerrepresentation #wideraccess #associationforfamiliesofindependentschooling #AFIS
