Inclusivity, the trainee teacher and the ‘black hole’ of special educational needs and disabilities
Written by: Amy Hadfield
7 min read
Amy Hadfield, Specialist SEND Teacher and SENDCo, UK
Although the approach to special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) has seen an improvement since the creation of the SEND Code of Practice (2014), there are still advances to be made, with improvements in initial teacher training (ITT) being one of them. Pre-2015, UK policymakers were so concerned about one aspect, ITT in education, that they funded the ‘Towards a new reality for teacher education for SEND – DfE SEND in ITT project report and roadmap for SEND’ (Mintz et al., 2015), as it was thought that ‘[with]in initial teacher training in the UK there is not enough emphasis on special educational needs and disabilities (SEND)’ (Mintz et al., 2015, p. 6).
That being said, over recent years, improvements have been made to many aspects of SEND in education. The introduction of the SEND Code of Practice (DfE and DHSC, 2014) and, most recently, the Green Paper (DfE and DHSC, 2022) has added a legal emphasis on t
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