Middle-class parents are the worst, aren’t they? I should know: I’m one of them. And according to some council leaders, as reported in The Times, I am partly responsible for their financial woes. Why? Because I am one of those people demanding that councils follow the law and support their disabled children at school. I know – how could I?
It came as a surprise to read this over my cornflakes: here I was labouring under the misapprehension that their money problems stemmed from chronic underfunding and financial mismanagement. How wrong can a pushy parent be?
Apparently, the problem is the cost of funding support for children with special educational needs like mine. It is true that my husband and I spent half our life savings – more than £20,000 – taking our council to court after it tried to argue that, having spent six years at his tiny local mainstream primary state school, our academically able autistic son who couldn’t cope with a mainstream environment any longer should attend a secondary school where 80 per cent of the pupils are non-verbal and with severe learning disabilities, where he was likely to leave with few qualifications.
But really, I didn’t think about what it was like for the poor council! I forced it to lawyer-up to try to prove to a judge that we were wrong and this was the right school. How gracious of it to concede, a week before the court date, that the special school we suggested – one that offers him the chance of doing five GCSEs – was more suitable.
And how wrong was I to feel that I had no other option but to hire a lawyer of my own, because it seemed the only way to force it to play by the rules, or even respond to an email, and that the case had been strung out in the hope we would run out of money.
But then, it’s no surprise councils are so stressed. As The Times piece showed, council leaders have to pay £1bn for transport to send children with special educational needs to schools as far as 100 miles away from their homes. (Taxis! Why can’t they walk?!)
You might argue it’s because there aren’t any local schools for them. Oh, if only there was some mechanism by which councils and the Government could build schools for SEND kids within their boroughs, so the need for taxis would disappear? What do you mean there is? Basic planning and realistic funding? I won’t hear of it!
It should be abundantly clear by now that parents like me are demanding a Rolls-Royce education for our children, and paying fancy lawyers to force councils to foot the bill. And those fancy lawyers cast a spell over judges so they agree with them in 96 per cent of cases, according to Ministry of Justice data. This magic is called the law.
Wait, hang on… the council loses 96 per cent of cases yet spends millions every year on lawyers to fight cases? And the Department for Education is pretty much turning a blind eye to this?
Now I see things quite differently. And come to think of it, all SEND parents I know have tiny expectations for what they want from their child’s school. Forget Rolls-Royce – a Robin Reliant education would do if it were filled with people who had the time to care and understand their child.
I am starting to think that middle class parents are getting the blame because we are the ones who can afford to push back. So perhaps we should be worrying about the working-class parents who can have their child’s rights ignored more easily? What wild thoughts these are. Accountability sounds expensive, and scarily close to an acknowledgement that vulnerable kids up and down the country are being badly failed, with lifelong consequences for them – and the public purse.
The law is there for a reason, and it should be protecting children of all backgrounds. So instead of pillorying middle-class parents for insisting it is followed, why not start putting the blame where it belongs, and doing something about it.
Jessie Hewitson is i‘s Money and Business Editor and the author of Autism: How to Raise a Happy Autistic Child.