What next for SEN Education Mr Johnson?
Damian Hinds, the now ex-Education Secretary, has been the focal point over the last few months of our combined anger of the Governments SEN cuts to our children's education. SEN or special educational needs, has seen its budget ruthlessly slashed and our children left floundering with no school place, transport or supportive educational care. This ruthless and somewhat cruel series of cuts has seen families resolve to repair this ignorance by taking action through the High Court.
However, unexpectedly, yesterday Mr. Hinds left his position as a resurgent Boris Johnson surged into Downing street. It is unclear whether the MP for East Hampshire has been sacked by new prime minister Boris Johnson or chosen not to serve under him. I saw the news of Mr. Hinds departure when I read his rather laborious tweet. I feel perhaps he decided to use this political flux moment as an excuse to leave, rather than continue to bluff his way through the SEND crisis. However, maybe, I thought or rather hoped, it was because I gave him such a grilling on his departments' terrible record of inclusive education when we clashed on BBC Breakfast. Damian, when I addressed him, looked like a man worn down and hopelessly out of his political depth, maybe he was withering at the prospect of his department's education shortsightedness leading his Government to court. Bluffing and looking like the proverbial rabbit in the headlights he failed to answer, let alone convince.
Mr. Hinds can lay claim to the shortest time in the position of Education Secretary, 18 months, and one can't help feeling that it was mostly forgettable and definitely not radical. In fact, his greatest claim to notoriety must be the current SEN situation he found himself in. He was, in fact, so quiet he didn't rock any boats. Perhaps he, like so many ministers dropped in from an Etonian height, know little or nothing about the Department they get a shiny new desk at, or perhaps he knew there was a storm of parental anger on the wind. Whatever the reason, his time in office was spent quietly.
It really seems the Government for all its bluff and chest heaving on the need for total education for all our children, has apparently mistaken the word "all" for "some" citing "budgeting challenges" as a comeback to a rightful demand for extra funding. Already SEN children and the system of support around them is facing a "projected 1.2 billion pound deficit" Our children are dreamers, aspirers, knowledge devourers, regardless of their abilities. They all have minds, they can and do learn, but the system seems to be pulling the rug out from under them. This financial scenario speaks volumes. It also speaks to us of the past when disabled children were deemed not to be worthy of comprehensive education because they, apparently wouldn't achieve and contribute. Nonsense. The past for disabled children and indeed all disabled people is a dark country, but with these hyperbole acts of educational idiocy, the future that lay before our children is already becoming a twilight before dusk.
Education is not just all about grades, University or a mammoth student debt (another story, another time) It's about exploration, fun, wonder & giving your child the chance to grasp the possibility of the unknown. To explore worlds & words to the best of their individual abilities. Until we live in a society that values just learning over constant, pressured academic achievements, Damian Hinds will just be another name on a list of forgettable Education Ministers who resolutely and continually, fail to see the pure wonder of inclusive learning
The new Minister, Gavin Williamson, has some quick learning to do and perhaps as this is a new era of politics, he may decide to start with a spin doctored smile and concede to our right and fair demands. However, anyone who keeps a tarantula on their desk in a rather schoolboy effort to emulate a Bond villain is probably, from a humane point of view, completely unapproachable. Maybe, however, in an effort to swing public favour back to a self-imploding party he may do the right thing and provide this missing money. The Conservative party, in its reclamation of public trust and love mode under Boris, should now stop channeling responsibilities over to local councils already starved of funds by Westminster. The buck ultimately stops at the Department of Education, at central Government.
As we consign Damian Hinds to political history and as much as we lay the blame for this villainous act of educational apartheid at his exit door, the legacy he leaves for us parents is one of what he hasn't done, rather than what he has. We will remember him as just one of many heads of a department much like any other Governmental department, one that fails to see any importance to the disabled community in this country. With currently one million of the recognised 1.28 million children with SEN not having any additional funding afforded to them, now is the time for the new boy to recognise total education, totally. Education for the entire nation, now.