Latest News for Parents & Carers

Five-year-olds with special educational needs in England are lagging a record 20 months behind their peers, according to a report that says the country’s youngest learners face a “deepening crisis”, five years after the pandemic.

The health secretary is under growing pressure to release a long-delayed report into the deaths of learning disabled and autistic people in England. Campaigners and bereaved families are demanding answers over the LeDeR report, which examined how and why some of society’s most vulnerable people die decades earlier than the general population.

The government is facing another political battle as backbench MPs, campaigners and parents have voiced concern at plans to overhaul support in England for children and young people with special educational needs or disabilities (Send).

The report follows weeks of speculation about whether the Department for Education (DfE), as part of its planned Schools White Paper due for publication in September, will remove the right to an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) for children attending mainstream schools.

After the late departure of a flight was blamed on her, Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson has described how humiliated she felt. While it was not her fault, she said the captain announced the delay in leaving was “because of the wheelchair”.