Parents want partnership, not platitudes, on SEND and school life.

Euan
Sep 18
6 min read

Newspaper headlines on a blue background discuss UK parents' concerns on education, including tutoring costs and special needs assessments.

A national report on parents and schools shows deep gaps in Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) support, rising worry about safety and behaviour, and parents’ clear priorities for learning. The fix is not willpower. It is design, trust, and practical help.

Parental engagement starts at the school reception desk, not the policy press release. A parent arrives with paperwork for a Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) assessment, a teacher is racing to a class, and the line is growing. Everyone is trying to help. The system is not.

Why this matters

Parental involvement is how families and schools work together day-to-day: meetings, newsletters, phone calls. Parental engagement is the activity parents do when engaging in their child’s learning, from reading at home to supporting with bits and pieces of homework. Both are under pressure. An added layer, for me, is parental participation, where parent voice is authentically considered and factored into school decision-making. Attendance concerns, uneven attainment, staff workload and parent wellbeing all intersect with how schools relate to families. The report, based on 5,866 UK parents with children aged 4 to 18, maps the strain and points to practical shifts.

What the report finds

First, the SEND pipeline is gridlocked and unequal. One in three parents has asked a school to assess their child for special educational needs. About a quarter of those still waiting have waited more than a year. Among parents of children with SEND, 58% report long waits for assessments. Thirty five percent say only some or none of their child’s needs are being met at school, which the report scales to 1.6 million children. Support is stratified by income. Parents with household incomes over £100,000 are far likelier to say needs are met and that support was easy to get than those under £50,000. For low income families, the path to help is longer and harder.

Second, safety and behaviour weigh on families and on learning time. Almost one million children feel unsafe at school, with children who have SEND twice as likely to feel unsafe as those without. Lessons are sometimes disrupted by poor behaviour for the equivalent of 2.9 million children. Children from the poorest families are almost 50% more likely to have learning disrupted than children in better-off families. Parents who describe their school’s behaviour approach as not strict are twice as likely to report disrupted learning as those who say it is strict. Two million children were bullied in the last year, according to parents, with rates twice as high for children with SEND and for children in the poorest households.

Third, happiness and relevance drop at secondary. Eight in ten children are happy at school most or all of the time, but that falls sharply at secondary. Two million children are only sometimes, rarely or never happy. Among unhappy pupils, 42% find lessons uninteresting. For secondary pupils who are unhappy, nearly one in three say what they are learning does not feel relevant to their future, almost three times the rate in primary. For children with SEND who are unhappy, parents cite unmet needs, learning struggles and difficulty making friends.

Fourth, parents’ priorities are clear. A majority want schools to focus on a broad education across subjects and on useful life skills. Only 19% say preparing children to pass exams should be a priority. Parents’ views are not anti-academic. They ask for teaching that builds thinking, behaviour and life skills alongside knowledge.

Fifth, family strain is real. One in three parents finds parenting difficult. Parental loneliness is common, with 860,000 parents feeling lonely every day. Parents of children with SEND or entitled to free school meals are three times as likely to feel lonely daily as others. For SEND families, the load is heavier. Forty percent report mental health problems linked to managing their child’s needs. Many have taken time off work or left jobs. More affluent families are far more likely to have accessed private help.

A rights-respecting SEND focus

The SEND findings form the spine of the report. The picture is of parents repeatedly asking for assessment, waiting long periods, and then finding support hard to access or patchy. Income magnifies each step. Where schools and councils can meet need, parents report progress. Where support is delayed or too rigid, the effects spill into behaviour, attendance, and family wellbeing.

Three points stand out.

Identification is not the same as provision. Parents report high rates of requests for assessment, long waits, and then unmet needs in the classroom. The line from request to support needs to be shorter and more predictable.
The classroom environment matters. Parents cite sensory and environmental barriers, one-to-one support gaps, and cultures that feel one size fits all. Adjustments that are universal, simple, and routine make a difference to many children, not only those with formal plans.
Income drives access. The gap between families under £50,000 and those above £100,000 runs through waiting, ease of support, and the extent to which needs are met. Families with money can often buy speed. Families without wait longer and receive less.

The counterpoint

School leaders will read this and say budgets are thin, vacancies are hard to fill, and initiatives pile up. Fair. Staff cannot conjure therapists, specialist teachers or educational psychologists. Yet the report’s evidence shows where shifts within current constraints change the daily experience: clearer behaviour policies applied consistently, earlier low-cost adjustments in classrooms, and structured communication that reduces churn and repeat conversations. When schools describe expectations clearly and act on bullying reliably, parents report fewer disruptions and higher satisfaction.

Recommendations

For policymakers and trusts

Triage the SEND backlog. Fund time-bound assessment hubs with education, health and social care inputs and publish local waiting-time dashboards. Do not leave parents to chase data across services.
Lock in minimum classroom adjustments. Issue a short national list of core, low-cost adjustments that every school should apply by default, from predictable routines and visual supports to quiet breakout spaces. Inspect for use, not paperwork.
Target resource to the income gap. Tie new SEND and pastoral funding to measures that reduce waits and increase needs-met rates for families under £50,000 household income. Track outcomes, not only inputs.
Stabilise the calendar where parents see benefit. Where parents of children with SEND and low income indicate shorter summers would help with cost and childcare, support local consultation and pilots, and evaluate.

For headteachers, teachers and SENCOs

Co-design a one-page behaviour charter with parents and pupils. Make it plain, predictable and relational. Communicate it often. Parents who perceive clarity report fewer disruptions.
Create an early-help SEND playbook. Train every teacher to effectively apply five universal adjustments within two weeks of a concern. Use a simple tracking tool so parents see what has been tried and what has changed in the classroom.
Schedule structured check-ins. For families waiting for assessment or provision, offer short, regular check-ins with a named contact. A ten-minute call with a clear next step can prevent repeated emails and frustration. Prioritising human connection.
Reduce friction in meetings. Offer hybrid parent meetings at times that work for shift workers, share papers in advance, and use a clear agenda with decisions and actions sent the same day. Letting parents lead can also help even out the power imbalance.
Track pupil relevance. In KS3 and KS4, or equivalent, build termly feedback on perceived relevance and boredom into curriculum reviews. The report links boredom and perceived irrelevance to unhappiness. Act on that signal.

For parents and families

Keep a learning log. A simple weekly note of what helped at home and what did not gives teachers actionable information and creates a shared record across staff changes.
Use the school’s named contact. Know who is the main contact for your child. Regular, short updates work better than long gaps followed by crisis. Ask for the early-help adjustments list and note what has been tried.
Connect with other parents. The report links loneliness with higher worry and lower independence for children. Join or start small parent groups focused on mutual support and sharing practical tips.

Reframing parental engagement

The report invites a shift in how we talk about parents and schools. Parental engagement is not a pep talk about trying harder. It is a design question. Who speaks to whom, when, and with what information. Which adjustments happen as standard in classrooms. How behaviour policies are communicated and applied. Where parents who are waiting for assessments can see the plan, not just the delay. As teachers and school leaders, are we asking the right questions?

It also invites a rights and dignity lens for SEND. Families are asking for assessments to be timely, support to be practical, and classrooms to be ready. Children should not have to fit a template before they can learn without distress. Parents should not have to buy speed.

We should make the change. But, will we?

Back at the school reception, the queue moves. The parent leaves with a date for a check-in and a short list of classroom adjustments that will start now. The teacher gets to their class on time. No one solved funding in a morning. They did, however, change the design of how they work with parents. The report shows where those changes matter most. Make them, measure them, and keep the partnership at the centre. That is how parental engagement becomes more than a slogan and how children, including those with SEND, get what they need to learn and to feel safe.

Read the report here.