Parents, carers and young people with special educational needs were at Devon County Council’s County Hall, Exeter, this morning to express their concerns about the education system.
The group brought with them young people’s shoes that they placed on the steps outside the building.
Each pair represented a child who has been failed by the system, and was labelled with a description of its young owner’s personal experience in education or of the education system.
Protest organiser, Charlie Rhodes, said:
“We’re highlighting today that every pair of shoes tells a story and how the system is failing each and every one of our children.
“We want to send the message to the council to say enough is enough. The system is so broken, it needs to change now.”
She added:
“There shouldn’t be any shoes on these steps at all.”
Councillor Denise Bickley, the council’s Cabinet Member with responsibility for services that support young people with special educational needs and disabilities, met with parents and carers for over an hour outside, talking with them and listening to their experiences.
“It’s been quite overwhelming seeing the shoes out on the steps and seeing some of the cards attached to them, putting young people’s names to those shoes, and seeing how parents feel about being let down by the system.
“We all know that the SEND system throughout the whole country is failing. It’s set up to fail at the moment. It’s adversarial. It makes people very angry.
“I’ve spoken to quite a lot of parents and there are specific issues we can address straight away – get reviews on their cases for example – but the system needs changing and we are trying so hard to change it.”
“Today’s protest is about more than EHCP waiting times,” she added. “Young people with SEND up and down the country are not served well by a national education system that is failing them and their families.
“We are doing everything we can in Devon to improve outcomes for children and young people, working with our partners in health and with schools and colleges.
“We have fantastic teachers who are willing to try new approaches. They (the government) just cannot stick to the curriculum as it is. It’s forcing children to be so stressed out, to be not welcomed or belong to their own primary school or their secondary school down the road. It’s forcing us to have to find alternative provisions for children that they shouldn’t have needed.
“We should be sending the children that have the high complex needs to the specialist school, rightly so, but we want other children to be educated comfortably within their own schools, in their own environment with their friends.
“We need this government to step up. The government has delayed its promised education reforms yet again. We need; parents and young people need that review to come now, for it to be brave, far reaching and fully resourced.”
