nasen responds to the Prime Minister’s education reforms for 14-year-olds
nasen welcomes the Prime Minister’s ambition to reform education so that more routes are valued equally. We see in this announcement an opportunity to build a system that works for every learner, and we welcome any reform that starts from that goal.
Young people have often been told there is one route to success and one kind of achievement that earns respect. That has let down a great many learners, including many with special educational needs and disabilities, who know what they want to do and thrive when given a clear path to do it. A system that opens more doors, earlier, is a system we want to help shape.
For these reforms to deliver on their promise, nasen believes several things must hold true.
Inclusion has to be designed from the start, not added later. The measure of these pathways will be whether they are built for the full range of learners from day one. That means high-quality provision with high expectations. New routes must never become a lower tier, and they must never be treated as a default destination for learners with SEND. Every pathway should be open to every young person on the basis of their strengths, interests and aspirations.
Personalisation is the point. The strength of this idea is that it lets education flex around the young person rather than pressurising the young person into a fixed box. That flexibility has to be real: learners should be able to combine subjects across different pathways, and to move between routes later if their ambitions change.
It must join up with the systems already in place. For learners with Education, Health and Care plans, these pathways need to connect with the annual review process and with existing planning, not sit alongside them as a separate track. One joined-up system, with the young person’s voice at the centre of every decision, is what makes person-centred education real rather than rhetorical.
The detail, the funding and the capacity will decide whether this works. We welcome the direction, but the ambition has to be matched by resources: enough high-quality placements, enough support for the staff delivering this in schools, and impartial, expert careers guidance for every learner. We are also mindful of the risk of a postcode lottery. A young person’s options should not depend on whether they happen to live near a particular industry. Reform must reach coastal, rural and less-industrialised areas as fully as it reaches the cities, or it will widen the gaps it sets out to close.
We would also urge caution about narrowing choices too soon. International experience shows the danger of asking young people to specialise before they are ready. The goal should be to open opportunities, not to close them early.
nasen’s position is straightforward: all education pathways should be open to all learners, with the right support in place so that every young person can achieve. That is what inclusion by design looks like, and it is the test we will apply to these reforms as they develop.
Key message:
“Every pathway should be open to every young person on the basis of their strengths and interests, not their diagnosis.”
