The autism crisis (Autistic pupils in England denied right to education as absenteeism surges, says charity, 5 March) is the latest in a long list of crises in English schools that the Guardian has reported on recently, including the children’s mental health crisis, the teacher recruitment and retention crisis, the headteacher retention crisis, the absenteeism crisis, the Ofsted intimidation crisis, the crisis of children not being toilet trained or knowing how to brush their teeth, the literacy crisis, the maths crisis and now the special educational needs and disabilities (Send) crisis.
Is it not time that someone (a future Labour government perhaps) started to join the dots and realise that a new Education Reform Act is needed to rescue our children from this crisis in education? They could start with a snappy election slogan – “Education, education, education” for example – and a commitment to bringing back Sure Start centres, funding nursery and early years education properly, reversing almost all the Gove-era ideological changes to the curriculum and testing regimes, bringing back the arts, humanities, sport and extracurricular activities that schools can no longer afford or find time for, funding and reforming Send provision, investing properly in child and adolescent mental health services, abolishing Ofsted and replacing it with his majesty’s inspectors, introducing a fair salary system and, finally, abolishing multi-academy trusts and bringing all schools back under properly funded local education authority control.
Yes, of course, it would be expensive, but saving future generations from all these crises would be priceless.
Doreen Worthington
Lincoln
