DfE seems like it simply wants to take the students who can't get special school places, and put them into the empty mainstream classrooms.

This would prioritise resource considerations over education.

We'll see what the white paper says but I'm not hopeful:

open.substack.com/pub/jimlaude...

I like the comparing similar schools approach, I think that'll be useful.

But most of this feels like contradictory policy emerging because govt finds it so difficult to work across departments/levels, and it's much easier for DfE to just mandate a bunch of stuff for schools.

Yeah goes both ways for sure

Plugging this open.substack.com/pub/jimlaude...

Imagine a family where mum is off work with MH issues, and child needs SEND support. Pretty common situation. Child has low attendance.

It's not fully a school issue, it's not fully a DWP issue, it's not fully an NHS issue. Whitehall therefore cannot compute.

We need to break the silo mentality.

Thanks for having a look!

Yes lots in that I think

I think the idea of sidelining Ofsted is good and I like the idea of getting services into settings. Imo all the evidence says that early years is where you can make the difference so my idea would be to unlink funding from its tie to 'working families'. The EPI and Sutton trust both agree I think.

Here's my attempt at where govt could go with this - interested in your thoughts:

open.substack.com/pub/jimlaude...

Thanks Nicole. I think really careful live monitoring from DfE is the only way to make it feasible - with an acknowledgement there will be some failures that we can learn from.

Yes, that would be how I'd do it

Absolutely agree, @mrjlauder.bsky.social

Just that my impression was I agreed with the direction of argument but wouldn't go as far on some of the specific claims. Been a while since I read though.

I've read Ian's work. My impression was it overeggs the pudding sometimes, but on this I totally agree - a key question for oracy is what or whose oracy is it?

This is exactly it. I've always supported autonomy for schools and trusts as far as possible - diktat is going to mean crowbarring in poor practice at scale.