“These parents and children are far from alone. As an Education Select Committee report on SEND education put it, thousands of others are caught up in a nightmare of “bureaucracy, buck-passing and confusion” in a system that “breeds conflict and despair”. And it’s the whole system that’s progressively been allowed to fail for years and nurtured to ensure the buck gets passed around to everyone except back to this Tory government. Ultimately, the trail for this local school and County Council failure leads to Downing Street.

For over a decade, this government has been starving SEND education and local authorities of resources. The most vulnerable children are paying the highest price for Tory cuts. They’ve done this at the same time as demotivating and forcing out committed and hardworking staff by imposing completely inappropriate and punitive market principles onto schools.

We’ll be back here over and over unless we grasp the need for profound and systemic changes to special needs and mainstream education. Sadly, I can’t see that coming without a change of government because from their reluctance to provide school meals for the poorest to the huge recent cut to Universal Credit, this lot show absolutely no empathy with or concern for people less fortunate than themselves.”