Special educational needs
The NGA fully supports the principle of an inclusive system of education. We believe that mainstream schools should make every effort to meet the educational needs of the widest range of abilities.
We do not however believe that mainstream schools can necessarily always offer the best provision for all children with special needs, and it follows that we believe that there is an important role for special schools working collaboratively with their local mainstream counterparts.
We believe that the current system of generating statements for children with special needs is seriously flawed and that more progress needs to be made to ensure that the resources allocated to support children with special needs actually reach the intended target.
We believe that the post of SENCO is a vital part of the special needs system and we believe that there should be a mandatory qualification for SENCOs, who should be part of the senior leadership team in their schools.
We recognise that some pupils have severe and complex behavioural, emotional and social difficulties and will need specialist provision if they are to overcome their difficulties and move forward to enjoy a successful adult life. We believe that current provision for these children is inadequate and that the presence of children with severe and complex behavioural problems in mainstream schools can cause real damage to the education of thousands of children.
We believe that schools need high quality advice and support for their special needs provision and we argue that it is unacceptable that the bureaucracy of statementing - added to historically low levels of funding - means that the educational psychology service and other professional services in most local authorities are overstretched and under resourced.