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Press Release

PAT WELCOMES SEN REPORT

06 July 2006

The Professional Association of Teachers (PAT) has welcomed the Education and Skills Committee’s Report, Special Educational Needs, published today (6 July 2006).

PAT Senior Professional Officer Alison Johnston said: “We welcome the report and hope it will make the Government sit up and listen.

“There is certainly a ‘post-code lottery’ of provision across the country and hence a need for greater investment in staff and resources to provide the best possible education and care for pupils with special educational needs wherever they live.

“Feedback from members suggests that many of these pupils are being ‘sidelined’ – through a lack of resources, by policy decisions or by a greater emphasis on pupils who will achieve good academic results.

“The Government must give clearer guidance on what it means by ‘inclusion’. Some SEN pupils benefit from being taught in mainstream schools, with support from appropriately trained staff, while others need the specialist care and education provided by special schools.

“This is the view set out in the Government’s own special educational needs strategy, although it seems this theory has not necessarily been the reality in many parts of the country.

“At PAT’s 2005 Annual Conference, members backed a motion which stated that PAT, ‘along with the other teacher associations, supports the view of inclusion set out in the Government’s SEN strategy, Removing Barriers to Achievement [http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/wholeschool/sen/senstrategy]. This clarifies that inclusion is not about all pupils being included in mainstream education, but all schools working together as part of an inclusive education service to meet pupils’ needs in the most appropriate setting.’”

At PAT’s 2006 Annual Conference in Oxford in August [http://www.pat.org.uk/index.cfm?param=content/conf06.htm], members will debate a motion that the Government’s policy on inclusion has led to a decline in local authority-funded special schools, resulting in “a shortage of reasonably priced, appropriate educational provision for a significant number of statemented pupils”.

There will also be a discussion on the topic that the Government is “writing off KS3 special needs pupils by preventing them from showing their potential”.



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Voice: the union for education professionals

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