The Missing Middle

There are a growing number of children within our education system who are being left behind. 

They are the children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) whose needs affect their everyday life and every aspect of their education, but who are not ‘severe’ enough to access specialist provision.

They are the children whose parents are told by SENCOs “oh they muddle along just fine!” Or “Oh I didn’t know about them, they weren’t on my radar” (yes, both of these things have been said to me by the SENCO at my son’s school…)

Muddling along is not enough. These children are surviving in mainstream rather than thriving, but they do not meet the threshold for specialist provisions.

I am not stating that every child needs a specialist provision, but the provision being provided for them in mainstream schools are severely lacking, leaving children to constantly find themselves caught in the middle. 

These children may have autism, ADHD, speech and language difficulties, sensory processing differences, social communication needs, emotional regulation difficulties, or a combination of several of these. They may have an Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP), sometimes with extensive provision laid out in it which on paper may look comprehensive. In reality, the child may be spending every day struggling to access an environment that simply is not designed around their needs. 

The Problem With “Mainstream Or Specialist”

Our education system often appears to operate on a binary model where a child is either able to access mainstream education with reasonable adjustments and additional support, or their needs are considered significant enough to require specialist provision. The problem arises when there are children who sit between these two categories. 

These are the children who may be academically capable but cannot manage the sensory demands of a busy classroom. 

These are the children who understand the curriculum but cannot consistently access it because of overwhelming anxiety. 

These are the children who are bright and articulate but experience severe emotional dysregulation. 

These are the children who can communicate verbally but struggle profoundly with social communication. 

These are the children who can attend school, but at what enormous emotional cost?

These are the children who appear to be “fine” because they mask their difficulties throughout the school day, only to fall apart the moment they get home. 

These are the children we are leaving behind. 

These children can be hard to categorise which could be part of the problem as we have become so focussed on determining whether a child is “severe enough” for specialist provision that we lost sight of the most important question. 

Is The Child Actually Having Their Needs Met Where They Are?

A child does not have to be failing academically to be struggling. They do not need to have been permanently excluded to be in crisis. They do not need to be non-verbal to need speech and language support. They do not have to be unable to attend school at all before we acknowledge that something in fundamentally wrong.

But They Are Fine… 

One of the biggest misconceptions surrounding SEND is that academic attainment is a reliable indicator of whether a child’s needs are being met. It is not. A child can achieve excellent grades and still be struggling, they can be intelligent and articulate while experiencing debilitating anxiety. These children might be excelling in their lessons and then spending every break time alone without the social capabilities to change this. They may appear to be sat in lesson attentively listening while actually, they are overwhelmed by the noise, light and sensory demands of the room, making them unable to voice their struggles. This can all appear as them being compliant because they have learnt that their needs will not be accommodated so there is no point expressing them.

These children can often mask so effectively through years of self-training to “fit in” that the adults around them do not realise how much they are struggling until they are at breaking point. 

The children that are often overlooked in this current system are the ones who are the “easiest” and yet they may only appear so easy because they are holding so much in, they are trying their hardest to cope in a world not designed for them. 

We must stop asking only, “what can this child achieve?” And start also asking, “What does it cost them to achieve this?”

Mainstream Schools Are Struggling Too. 

Believe it or not, this is not a condemnation of mainstream education, nor is it an argument that every child with SEND should automatically attend specialist provision. 

Mainstream schools can provide incredible support for children with SEND. There are dedicated teachers, teaching assistants, SENDCOs and pastoral teams who go above and beyond every day. We also must acknowledge the reality of the environment they are working within though. 

Mainstream classrooms are large, staff are stretched, budgets are limited, teaching assistants are often supporting multiple pupils with competing needs, and SENDCO’s caseloads are increasing in numbers and complexity. Teachers are expected to differentiate, personalise and adapt provision while simultaneously meeting the needs of the entire class. The problem here is not that mainstream schools do not care. The problem is that we are often asking mainstream settings to meet needs that they simply do not have the capacity, staffing, environment or specialist expertise to meet consistently. 

When this happens, everybody loses. The child, their peers, teachers and families are all losing while schools are left feeling as though they have failed when in reality, the system has failed to provide the right level of support. 

What Impact Is This Having On Our Children?

For children who are caught in this missing middle, the consequences can be profound:

• Anxiety

• Emotionally based school refusal

• School-related trauma

• Low self-esteem

• Social isolation

• Exhaustion

• Sensory overload

• Emotional dysregulation

• Repeated suspensions

• Exclusions

And sometimes, complete disengagement from education. 

The tragedy is that many of these outcomes are predictable and come with warning signs that are being continually ignored. We know when a child is becoming increasingly distressed or when attendance is failing. We know when parents are reporting that their child is coming home exhausted, distressed or dysregulated every day or when they are spending more time in the inclusion […and that is a whole other blog! -ed.] room than in their classroom. We know when a child is repeatedly being removed from lesson because their environment is too overwhelming or when their behaviour is communicating a need. 

So why, so often, do we wait?

Wait for the crisis or collapse, when the situation becomes impossible to ignore and then claim that there were no warning signs and it “just came from nowhere’

So, What Can We Do?

There is an important distinction between inclusion and integration. Just because a child is sitting in a mainstream classroom, does not automatically mean that they are included. Inclusion should actually mean that they are able to participate, learn, communicate, regulate, develop relationships, feel safe and be themselves. A child who spends every day overwhelmed, masking, isolated or unable to access the curriculum may technically be “included” in the classroom, but do they have a meaningful inclusion in their own education? 

We need to be brave enough to ask these questions because the SEND system and the education system is under immense pressure and there are no simple solutions. We cannot, however, continue to allow our children to fall into the gap between mainstream and specialist provision. These children need the right environment, expertise and support and the answer should never be to wait until they reach crisis point to put interventions in place. 

We should not be watching children deteriorate before we decide that they deserve more. 

Every single child deserves an education that enables them to thrive- not simply an education in which they are expected to survive. 

The SEND missing middle is not a group of children who do not fit into our system, it is a sign that our system needs to become more flexible and until we acknowledge that, too many children will continue to fall through the gap.