Inclusion or Illusion?: Why Modern School Policy Creates "SEND" Where There Used to Be Students.

By Kelly Hutton

With 1.7 million of our children in England receiving support for special educational needs (SEN) - about one in five pupils -and almost half a million are holding an Educational Health and Care Plan (EHCP) it's clear that something has shifted. In 2006, the number of children with Statements of SEN (the EHCP of its day) was around 250,000 children, roughly 3% of pupils. Between 2018 and 2024 alone, ECHPs rose by 71% (ifs.org.uk). These numbers raise an uncomfortable but important question: have children's needs changed, or has the system changed around them?

Looking Back: A Very Different Landscape

When I first became a nursery manager, I had been the setting's SENCo for about a year. In 2006, SEND training was minimal. A 3-day course meant SEND Inclusion was basically teaching us how to fill out the forms required to get additional funding, and that was about it. At the time, the most complex needs I encountered were speech and language referrals. Yet, looking back, I could clearly identify several children who would struggle in today's system - not because their needs were different, but because the expectations were.

Fast-forward 20 years, and I meet children with significant needs everywhere I work. In just the last five years, I've supported seven children whose needs are so complex that they struggled in mainstream school and needed specialist provision and many more who are just about coping. The contrast is stark.

The Shift in What Classrooms Demand From Children

Classrooms today look and feel very different from those of the mid-2000s. The 2014 curriculum overhaul accelerated the pace of learning, condensed the content, and reduced creative subjects. Digital platforms now dominate learning, increasing transitions, cognitive load, and literacy demands. Children are expected to navigate apps, instructions, and online tasks with a level of independence that simply wasn't required twenty years ago, when instruction was adult and human-led.

These changes will have disproportionately affected children with:

• slower processing

• sensory sensitivities

• anxiety

• working memory difficulties

• subtle neurodivergence

This really begs the question, then, are our children "more SEND" than before, or is the environment just less forgiving?

Curriculum Changes: Narrower, Faster, Less Flexible

Over the last two decades, curriculum reforms have steadily increased expectations without increasing support, and whilst we have written reports, filed our complaints, and tried to reform from within, have we, like the frog oblivious to the rising heat in the pan of water, truly understood the impact of the cumulative changes?

• 2014 National Curriculum overhaul - heavier content, earlier literacy demands, and a significant reduction in creative subjects that once supported engagement and motivation.

• Linear Assessment Reforms (2015-2018) - Few opportunities to show progress over time, more pressure on high-stakes exams, and rising mental health concerns.

• Oracy and Literacy elevation - Important skills, but added on top of existing pressures, disadvantaging children with language, processing, or social-communication differences

Individually, each reform might have been manageable. Together, they have created a system where only the most typical learners thrive without additional support.

Behaviour and Attendance Policies: Compliance Over Connection

As curriculum demands increased, behaviour and attendance policies tightened. Instead of reviewing whether the system was becoming too demanding for our children, national policy shifted towards stricter behaviour management and attendance enforcement, reshaping the expectations demanded of the children.

• Behaviour systems now prioritise uniformity, sanctions, and public tracking.

• Developmental variation is less tolerated

• Anxiety, sensory distress, and unmet needs are often treated as non-compliance, rather than a need.

Schools were celebrated for their strict approaches on national media, such as the Michaela Community School, once touted as the strictest School in Britain, with a "Boot Camp in their first week in Year 7 (itv.com) However, reports into strict schools, such as the Mossbourne Federation, found that these policies led to a culture of shouting, public humiliation, and a lack of support for pupils with special needs (bbc.com)

For many children, diagnosis then becomes the only way to be taken seriously, rather than punished.

The Diagnosis Bottleneck: When Labels Become Gateways

This has led to a massive increase in the need for formal identification rather than addressing the actual needs of the child. It has created a bottleneck.

• Waiting lists grow because assessment is required before help is offered

• Families who cannot afford private assessments face long delays and ongoing sanctions

• Teachers cannot act on professional judgement without "evidence", yet they are overwhelmed by planning, documenting, and proving everything that they do.

The emotional toll on families and the professional frustration for staff is immense.

The Impact on Teachers and School Staff

Teachers know their pupils. They know who needs movement, who needs quiet, who needs time, and who needs a different route into learning. But curriculum and policy changes, enforced through high-stakes Ofsted inspections, have reduced their autonomy.

• Less time for differentiation

• Behaviour expectations that conflict with child development

• Fewer support staff and rising workloads

• A widening gap between what teachers believe is right and what the system demands.

In 2023-24, around 41,200 full-time equivalent teachers left the state schools in England, with 91% leaving for reasons other than retirement (University of Manchester). This is not a personal failing; it is a structural one.

What Has Been Lost: Flexibility, Humanity, and Trust

We have shifted from "What does this child need?" to "What evidence do we have?" Educational policy has increasingly been linking a school's success to quantifiable data, rather than focusing on the narratives of what is actually happening with our children. Moving away from teacher intuition towards a more rigorous evidence-based culture has, in a large part, been driven by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), which has funded over 200 randomised controlled trials since 2011, in order to determine "what works". As a result, a Toolkit Culture has been bred with large proportions of UK School leaders using the EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit to justify the spending of Pupil Premium funding, etc which has led us away from the ability to be flexible.

This shift is strongly linked to declining student mental health. YoungMinds reports that over half of students feel negatively affected by their place of education due to the academic pressure and high-stakes testing (YoungMinds). Within education, we have lost our sense of humanity and have replaced it with data.

We now operate in a system that responds to crisis rather than preventing it, a system that gatekeeps support through diagnosis rather than offering early, relational intervention.

Reimagining Support Without Labels

Support should be based on need, not diagnosis. Classrooms should be designed with neurodiversity in mind. Teachers should be trained and then trusted to adapt. Early low-level interventions should be accessible without excessive paperwork. Children's nervous systems haven't changed, but the expectations placed upon them have.

If you have watched this shift unfold, as a parent, teacher or professional, your perspective really matters. How has the system changed for the children you know? Does this reflect what you're seeing in your setting, your family, or your community?

In your experience, what has most contributed to the rise in children needing a diagnosis to access support?

• The curriculum has become narrower and more demanding
• Behaviour and attendance policies have become much stricter
• Reduced staffing and support in schools
• Children's needs are genuinely just increasing

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