Your report highlights the impact of the inadequate funding of special educational needs and disabilities provision (Schools forced to cut back on support for Send pupils in England, poll finds, 23 April). However, this moment should prompt not just concern about diminishing support, but a more fundamental examination of the system that produces these pressures in the first place.
I lead a school with a significantly higher-than-average proportion of disadvantaged pupils with Send. For us, inclusion is not an add-on but a commitment embedded in relationships and practice. The issue is not solely financial. It is also about approach, language, culture and what schools are incentivised to value. Without that foundation, increased funding alone will not deliver what our Send children need.
It is welcome that Ofsted has sharpened its focus on inclusion. Yet this sits uneasily alongside performance measures that continue to prioritise attainment outcomes, often without sufficient regard for the complexity of educating vulnerable pupils. This is a systemic blindness that discourages schools from being inclusive, when this means welcoming Send children who may affect their position on league tables.
If ministers are serious about inclusion, aligning funding and accountability is essential. But it also requires a more searching examination of the assumptions and culture that shape practice across the system.
Jan Shapiro
Headteacher, Addey and Stanhope school, Lewisham, London
An “exam-obsessed” system that fails to promote communication skills and creativity (Letters, 23 April)? My 10-year-old granddaughter has stunning evidence to support Alan Milburn’s conclusion. A revision sheet for her upcoming Sats requires her to differentiate between modal verbs of possibility and certainty, to circle determiners and to identify whether conjunctions are subordinating or coordinating. How many Guardian readers – or journalists – can tell the difference between the word “since” used as a subordinating conjunction and as a preposition? Has not knowing this damaged their career chances or wellbeing?
Mary Smith
Bearsted, Kent