The government has announced that more than 3,000 thousand places will be created in 37 new special free schools to be opened throughout England.

CSIE applauds the intention to provide tailored support for children categorised as having “special educational needs and disabilities (SEND)”. At the same time, however, there seems to be no indication of a parallel effort to increase capacity in mainstream schools to provide for the full diversity of learners. This seems inconsistent with the government’s pledge of parental choice.

CSIE has shown, through its Trends reports which date back to the 1980s, that the proportion of children in special schools in England has been steadily rising in recent years. This means that the country’s ordinary schools are the main place of education for a continually decreasing proportion of all children and young people.

The UK has been repeatedly criticised for failing to develop inclusive education by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, for example in the concluding observations of its examination of the UK in 2016 and, more recently, the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in its concluding observations following its 2017 review of the UK’s compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

The government has repeatedly stated that all parents have a choice of type of school for their child. Part III of the Children and Families Act 2014 concerns the education of children and young people categorised as having special educational needs or disabilities. The Code of Practice provides statutory guidance on how the law should be put into practice. Paragraph 1.26, on p.25, states very clearly that the UK Government is committed to developing more inclusive education and that the law has a presumption of inclusion in mainstream schools for disabled children and young people.

No matter how welcome this intention might be, the fact remains that if parents have to make their choice in a context where mainstream schools are not willing or able to offer a place to their child, their choice becomes severely limited. This effectively creates a chicken-and-egg relationship between parental choice and the context in which it takes place. In other words, until schools in every part of the country are willing and able to include the full diversity of learners, the promise of parental choice remains hollow.

As CSIE has said before, offering an entitlement without developing inclusive schools is like issuing a ticket and keeping the door locked.