This week I had the absolute pleasure (read: emotional exhaustion wrapped in admin) of attending my daughter’s EHCP meeting.
As any parent of a SEND child knows, these meetings are more stressful than OFSTED, job interviews, or trying to teach Year 9 last period on a windy Friday.

Enter the SALT team — “Speech and Language Therapy.”
Except, in our area, there’s very little therapy and quite a lot of “we’ve decided to discharge her because we don’t know what else to do.”

You know… exactly what you want to hear about your autistic child.

The Great Disappearing Act

The SALT team — whose job title literally contains the word therapist — have offered, and I quote, zero therapy.
Not reduced therapy, not interim therapy, but zero.
The same amount of therapy you get from a traffic cone.

Their grand conclusion?

“She presents as PDA, so there’s nothing we can do. She has met her targets. We want to reduce provision.”

Reduce. Provision.

For a child who isn’t meeting her targets — she’s simply not letting them in the door.

Imagine a fire alarm inspector coming to your house, not being allowed inside because the dog barks at him, and declaring:

“Well, everything seems fine. No fires here. I’m signing you off.”

That’s the level of logic we’re working with.

If She Was Meeting Targets… Isn’t That the Point?

Let’s pretend for a moment that she was meeting every target.
Gold stars everywhere.
Progress chart looking like an impressive stock market climb.

Wouldn’t that be because — oh, I don’t know — the provision was working?

If a child is thriving because of support, the correct response is not:

“Fantastic! Let’s remove it.”

That’s like taking antibiotics for a chest infection, feeling better, and the GP saying:

“You seem fine now. We’ll stop medication immediately and permanently. Try not to breathe too deeply.”

SEND Reform: The Great Disappearing Provision Scheme

With all this talk about SEND reform and “reviewing EHCP thresholds,” it doesn’t take a genius to see what’s happening.
We’re slowly, quietly drifting towards:

Cutting funding by cutting support.

And who’s first on the chopping block?
The most vulnerable cohort in the country — disabled children and young people.

Cost-saving by targeting those with the least ability to fight back.
It’s brutal. It’s predictable.
And it’s depressingly in line with the direction this country is going.

The Loudest Parents Win — And That’s Not Equality

Here’s the ugly truth:
The parents who shout the loudest get the EHCPs.
That’s not a system — that’s a competition.

Getting an EHCP is like running a marathon made out of paperwork, acronyms, and thinly veiled hostility.
Maintaining an EHCP?
That’s the Ultra Marathon.
Barefoot. In the rain.
With Ofsted running behind you shouting about “impact.”

But there aren’t enough of us.
We’re a loud bunch — but not a big one.

And many parents of SEND children don’t even know help exists, let alone how to navigate the labyrinth of referrals, panels, tribunals, and reports.

That’s the terrifying bit:
So many children are unsupported because their parents don’t know where to start, or they’re overwhelmed, or they’ve been fobbed off so many times they’ve given up.

A Society Splitting Down the Middle

The gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots” is widening — and fast.
And SEND families are watching that chasm grow from the wrong side.

It’s starting to feel like a class-driven, quietly autocratic system where:

• Those with knowledge and stamina fight
• Those without fall through the cracks
• And those who should be supporting them claim they’re meeting targets they’ve never meaningfully assessed

We’re not building a society.
We’re building a hierarchy.
One where the quietest, smallest, and most vulnerable voices are being drowned out by budgets, bureaucracy, and the desperate need to “save money.”

Final Thought

So when the SALT team cheerfully suggests my daughter should be discharged — not because she is thriving, but because they don’t know how to reach her — it’s hard not to feel like the whole SEND system is being gently and quietly dismantled.

And the people who are supposed to help us are walking out with clipboards saying,
“We’ve done all we can.”

When they haven’t even begun.

Every Monday morning in briefing, it happens.
Our deputy stands at the front, coffee in hand, PowerPoint glowing, and says the same thing:

“Attendance is a whole-school target. We need to drive attendance. We all need to push attendance to bring up the numbers.”

Cue the staffroom nodding. The silent agreement that yes, attendance is indeed a problem. And also, yes, we have absolutely no idea what we’re supposed to do about it.

Where Did Everyone Go?

Attendance in schools has fallen off a cliff since the pandemic.
Before COVID, the odd sick day or family trip was just that — an exception.
Now, it feels like half the country is off on “a well-being day.”

The truth is, the entire attitude towards school has changed.
Parents are increasingly prioritising their child’s mental health — or, more often, their child’s opinion — over attendance.

“Yeah, he didn’t feel like coming in today.”
“She was a bit tired, so we had a duvet day.”
“He wanted to stay home with the dog.”

And while it’s easy to roll our eyes, part of this is cultural.
Since the rise of remote work, children have watched their parents spend entire days in pyjamas, occasionally wandering to the fridge between Teams calls.
So why wouldn’t they think school could work the same way?

To them, staying home is no longer rebellion — it’s role modelling.

The National Crisis Nobody Knows How to Fix

Let’s call it what it is: a national crisis.
Children are missing more school than ever before, and no one really has an answer.

The government’s “plan” seems to be:

“The plan is… we need a new plan.”

It’s an ouroboros of policy — a snake eating its own tail while muttering “we need a multi-agency response.”

And schools? We’re left to fix it.
We’re now expected to get kids out of bed, into uniform, and through the front gates — which is quite the task when neither they nor their parents see the point.

Without literally driving to their house, dragging them out of bed, and buckling them into the back seat like a hostage in a hi-vis jacket (which, to be clear, is frowned upon in the safeguarding policy), there isn’t much we can do.

“But What Are You Doing About Attendance?”

That’s the question, isn’t it?
It’s the one every school leader dreads during an inspection.

“So, what are you doing about attendance?”

What are we doing about attendance?
Well, we’ve got a spreadsheet.
A very shiny spreadsheet.

It’s got colour coding, conditional formatting, and a graph that goes in the wrong direction.
We show it to the kids every week, like it’s a motivational tool.

“Tommy, your attendance is at 78%. That’s not great.”

Meanwhile, Tommy’s thinking:
“My Fortnite level’s gone up three tiers since last week. That’s progression.”

For him, attendance is just another game score — one he has absolutely no interest in improving.
And if you think that conversation motivates him, you’re sorely mistaken.

The Impossible Plan

There’s no plan.
Not a real one, anyway.

Because this problem sits outside the walls of the classroom.
It’s social. It’s cultural. It’s generational.
And yet somehow, it’s still being measured in performance management targets.

We can’t fix attendance by guilt-tripping teachers into pep talks.
We can’t “drive attendance” by shouting “drive attendance.”
And we definitely can’t solve a societal issue with an Excel file and a half-eaten box of Celebrations in the attendance office.

The truth is simple: teachers can inspire, support, and encourage — but we can’t teleport students out of bed.

Until the system recognises that attendance is a national issue, not a school issue, we’re going to keep being blamed for something we can’t control.

Final Thoughts

So maybe, instead of punishing schools for the country’s new “optional attendance culture,” we try something different.
Support parents. Fund proper interventions. Create environments where school feels relevant again.

Because right now, we’re just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic — except the Titanic is half-empty, the orchestra’s on strike, and Ofsted’s asking for your evidence log.

And until something changes, I’ll keep smiling politely in Monday briefing, nodding at the words “whole school target,” and quietly wondering whether next week I should just bring a tow rope and a megaphone.

Just to, you know, drive attendance.