How SEND pressures are exposing training gaps in mainstream settings

We keep hearing about the crisis around SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) provision. I’m not sure that’s the whole picture. 

I think there is a systemic crisis. And SEND is simply the mirror holding it up. 

I’ve worked across mainstream and alternative provision. I’ve sat in multidisciplinary meetings, navigated crisis calls, written individual development plans, advocated for reasonable adjustments, and listened to parents who are absolutely beside themselves because they cannot get their child through the school gates. 

What I see, again and again, isn’t a lack of care. People care deeply. Teachers care. Leaders care. 

What I see is a training gap colliding with a performance-driven system that doesn’t lend itself to diversity. And SEND pressures are exposing that gap in real time. 

Inclusion in theory, division in practice

We in the education sector talk about inclusion beautifully. We have policies, agendas, statutory frameworks, and guidance that promise equity. 

But what we often deliver is the appearance of inclusion - with exclusion at the heart of it. 

We still tend to operate from a majority model: “This is what we do for most children. Then we do something additional for the ones who need it.” But what if the “ones who need it” are no longer a minority? Around 20% of learners now present as neurodivergent, and that’s just one strand of SEND. Add trauma, poverty, young carers, co-occurring health needs, social and emotional mental health challenges, and suddenly the margins look pretty wide. 

The fact is that the training many teachers receive does not prepare them for that complexity. It prepares them for curriculum delivery, classroom management, assessment, data. It does not always equip them to understand trauma responses, sensory overwhelm, intersectionality, or what co-occurring needs actually look like in a real, breathing human being. 

So when the pressure rises – pressure around attendance targets, inspection frameworks, progress measures – the system defaults to standardisation. 

And that’s where the cracks start to show. 

Behaviour or distress?

One of the clearest examples of this gap sits within behaviour policy. 

Many behaviour systems are built on compliance. They assume a level playing field: the same starting point, the same regulation capacity, the same executive function, the same safety at home. But not every child walks into school from the same place. 

Some are waking up in food insecurity. Some are caring for parents. Some are living with chronic anxiety. Some are managing sensory discomfort in polyester uniforms that they have to wear all day. Some are navigating neurodivergence that has not yet been understood, let alone supported. 

And sadly, when those children struggle, we often respond with removal, isolation, detention, internal exclusion units. We label it “behaviour”. But very often, it’s actually distress. 

The training gap here is profound. If we’re not equipping staff to recognise the difference between defiance and dysregulation, between non-compliance and overwhelm, we will continue to punish the very children who need relational safety the most. 

And then we wonder why attendance drops. 

The power of the data point

Attendance is perhaps the most revealing pressure point of all. 

We know that regular attendance correlates with positive outcomes. That is true. But correlation does not remove context. When schools are held to fixed attendance benchmarks without the flexibility for lived realities, vulnerable children quickly become statistical risks.  

I’ve heard year groups described as “bad” because two traumatised children brought the data down. Think about that for a moment. Two children in crisis became a data problem. 

I want to stress – this is not because educators are cruel. It’s because they are working inside a system that measures them against ever-rising benchmarks and inspects them within narrow timeframes, with no space for the nuances of supporting a diverse group of dozens or hundreds of young people.  

I think that the business model of education, in some cases, has dehumanised the narrative. And here, the training gap appears again. How many leaders have been trained to interpret data alongside story? To hold performance and vulnerability together? To see the child behind the percentage? 

We educators are cleansing data to survive inspections, while families are losing faith in the system altogether. The rise in home education tells us that something isn’t working. Parents are no longer passive recipients of schooling. Post-COVID, the curtain has been pulled back. They are watching. They are questioning. Trust is fragile. And punitive attendance letters to families already in distress do not help to rebuild it. 

Lowered ambition, unconscious bias

There is also a gap we don’t discuss so often: the gap in expectation. 

Research consistently shows that the moment we attach the words “special educational needs” to a child, our perception of their potential shifts.  

This often happens unconsciously - we tell ourselves we are being realistic. In truth, we may be limiting that young person. Our expectations of them fall – and so do their expectations of themselves. Their ambition drops. This is the exact opposite of what education is for. 

This is where training around bias, language, and high expectations matters deeply. Not as a tick-box CPD session, but as ongoing reflective practice. Because if we continue to operate from a deficit model, even subtly, SEND learners will internalise that story. And once you internalise a narrative of your own limitations, it becomes very hard to shake. 

When the environment fits

I did not thrive in mainstream school. But later, in Further Education, everything changed. The timetable was more flexible. The teaching was more relational. There was space for interest and autonomy. My lecturers were wonderfully human, they were quirky, real, engaged. And I excelled there. 

The difference was not my intelligence. It was the environment. 

That is what SEND pressures are revealing: when the environment is appropriate, many so-called “difficult” learners flourish. So perhaps the question is not “What is wrong with this child?” Perhaps it is “What about this environment is not working for them?” 

Training for a different future

If we want to move forward, we need to invest not only in policy reform but in training that matches reality. 

We need trauma-informed training that goes beyond buzzwords. We need teacher education that embeds neurodiversity, co-occurring needs, and intersectionality as core knowledge, not optional extras. 

We need to move from reactive adjustments to school-wide approaches – in essence, to do offer the provisions we currently reserve for “the ones who need it” to every single young person in our school community. 

That shift requires intentionality. It requires courage. It requires us to loosen the grip of pure performance metrics and reintroduce joy, flexibility and belonging. 

Because here’s what I do know: 

The children we’re talking about are not problems to be managed. They are extraordinary humans navigating complex realities. If we continue to squeeze them into a system built for a narrower definition of normal, we will keep losing them to exclusion, disengagement, and mistrust. 

SEND pressures aren’t the enemy, they’re the signal that our training, our structures, and our assumptions must evolve. 

The question is whether we are brave enough to listen.