In the foreword to a report by the centre-right thinktank Policy Exchange, the former health secretary Jeremy Hunt argues that children are being overdiagnosed with mental health and neurodivergent conditions. In England, one in five children has been identified with additional needs, and Hunt says that the rise in Send spending “risks the financial sustainability of local government.”
The idea of this claimed “overdiagnosis” is baffling to me because, as a secondary school teacher, I've seen firsthand how labyrinthine and difficult the process is. Some students never get a diagnosis and so will never get to thrive in the way they should. Often, too, there is a generational impact. Wary parents, with similar needs that they never received support for in school, are sceptical that schools would provide it for their children.
Hunt claims that the answer to some difficulties isn't a diagnosis but “the importance of good work, physical activity, social connection.” Naïve would be a compliment here, but ill-informed is probably more effective. With some additional educational needs, you cannot form a social connection easily. You probably can't access your work because you find it difficult to read or write. As for physical activity, are we just completely ignoring the spectrum of difficulties that come with any form of disability?
Teachers are running themselves ragged to provide the amount of support they want to in the classroom. In a class of 30, you’re balancing so many plates to make learning accessible. It’s stressful and exhausting, but we do it because we care and we want our students to have the best possible success in life. Hunt says that only SEND students with the highest need should have school support. That implies to me that we're going to have a ranking system of students’ needs and disabilities. Who's going to decide that? No teacher I know would prioritise some students over others.
So often, success is linked to results and grades, and that's where the system just does not suit all students. We are constantly shoving students who are circles into square-shaped holes. In English, for example, you no longer have the texts in exams. Learning 15 poems and three additional texts, one Shakespeare, one 19th century, is difficult for anyone to do, let alone if you have memory issues or dyslexia.
Even to get access arrangements for exams, you need to have an educational healthcare plan, testing, and numerous external professionals to okay that provision. And that is not costing the access arrangement of having extra time, a reader, or a scribe. Even the act of writing an exam paper is perhaps not reflective of what those students may go on to do professionally.
Hunt and Policy Exchange talk about how expensive Send provisions are. Would they consider putting some of that money towards creating alternative provision units in deprived areas, not shutting them down, as was the case for one such unit I worked in. Or perhaps, creating extra-curricular programs and vocational courses: with the government insisting that students stay in education until 17, what does that look like? What are you giving them to ensure they succeed?
As a society, we're being told to forget what we went through with the lockdowns, including the illnesses, bereavement and loss. These young people lost chunks of their growing up, and we’re just ignoring the impact that had on their development. Teachers were actively encouraged to pretend that nothing had happened and to keep things the same. Covid was, at minimum, 18 months of disruption; of virtual learning of assignments, and it's the students with SEND who were the most deprived. Those students celebrating their GCSE results last week missed out on their Year Six exams. They didn’t sit their SATs. We tell our students how vital exams are, yet there has been no additional provision offered by successive governments to support them through this, their first big round of exams.
As for the idea of the things being oversubscribed, surely that's because there isn't enough provision. The waitlist can be years for CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services), for autism diagnosis, and even for educational healthcare plans. Parents and guardians already have to fight so hard for them; squeezing budgets and processes will simply make this even harder. We risk losing more children in the system.
The discussion of “overdiagnosis” is only making things more difficult. By not allowing people a diagnosis, you're saying that there isn't a need. That is just shoving a problem under the carpet. It’s a ticking time bomb. For example, we spend our entire lives reading in some capacity. Be that reading contracts, manuals, bank statements or tenancy agreements. You’re learning how to negotiate those through your schooling. If you are not supporting young people to acquire crucial skills, how will that turn out in terms of their future contribution to the country, to the workplace, to the workforce?
Support, in whatever form it may come, is an investment. As a society, we need to support students even further to let them thrive – and remember that we benefit from their thriving.
Charlotte Harrison is a secondary school teacher in London
