Youth

Second part of a two-part article by Joe Langabeer

What is particularly disturbing about the crisis in SEN education is the attempt of the right-wing attempt to weaponise it. It is actually part of a wider strategy to justify cutting SEN services.

Kent County Council, for example, which Reform UK now controls, after the elections last May, is now looking to slash school transport spending, which is particularly necessary for children with special needs and disabilities. Farage proudly declared that this should be the parents’ responsibility and not the local authority’s.

He is thereby suggesting slashing the living standards of many families and undermining SEN provision, because Kent’s £98mn transport budget primarily supports families on low incomes and those with children who have special educational needs. Though he claimed there would be “exceptions” for children with SEN, he never explains what those exceptions would be.

Suspicions that Reform is simply out to take a chain saw to SEN spending is aroused by Farage’s claim in April, that Britain is “massively over-diagnosing” children with mental health conditions, SEN, and disabilities, without any evidence or research to support the idea.

Much of the rise in diagnoses of autism and other learning differences is due to greater awareness and improved diagnostic criteria. Many groups, including women and ethnic minorities, were historically under-diagnosed. The diagnostic process in the UK remains lengthy, expensive, and complex, often taking years. So, why else would Farage make such sinister remarks?

Elon Musk’s DOGE also targeted SEN children’s services

Farage and Reform have also recently set up a so-called “DOGE” team in Kent, a Poundshop imitation of Elon Musk’s unit in the US government, but likewise aimed to identify “non-priority” areas for cuts. The American counterpart also targeted students with disabilities, slashing programmes and leaving many without support, as reported by NPR.

Farage’s agenda mirrors the same approach. He wants to gut SEN support from local government, while diverting council funds into tax breaks for businesses. Meanwhile, Reform’s “Contract with the People” manifesto promises to scrap Labour’s VAT increase on private schools, protecting the same private monopolies that profit from SEN provision.

At the Reform UK conference this year, Farage even invited Aseem Malhotra, a discredited doctor known for peddling conspiracy theories, about COVID-19 vaccines, to deliver a speech. Malhotra has falsely linked vaccines to cancer and has served as an advisor to Robert F Kennedy Jr., now Health Secretary in the US. Kennedy has repeatedly claimed, based on a long-debunked 1990s study, that childhood vaccines cause autism and other developmental disorders. Reform UK is flirting with the same anti-science nonsense.

Much disinformation has been amplified by Donald Trump, who recently held a press conference with Kennedy, claiming that the painkiller Tylenol (a brand of paracetamol) causes autism, another baseless and dangerous assertion. Trump is gutting billions from the US Department of Education and from special needs support. As autism diagnoses increase, reflecting improved awareness and better care, these right-wing leaders are creating a climate of fear and scapegoating to justify cuts to vital services.

Reform UK is flirting with Trump’s anti-science agenda

Farage is trying to replicate this environment in the UK. Rather than condemning Trump’s absurd claims, he suggested that Trump “might have a point”. These political snake-oil salesmen know full well that what they are saying is untrue, but they use misinformation to justify dismantling support for the most vulnerable, thereby protecting the wealthy and the private institutions that pretend to serve them.

The World Health Organisation has made it clear that there is no scientific evidence linking paracetamol use in pregnancy to autism. Likewise, extensive research across decades shows that vaccines do not cause autism. The hysteria about “over-diagnosis” has always been a tool to deflect attention from the real threat to children’s wellbeing: unscrupulous politicians. Specifically, it is the political representatives of the ruling elite who protect the interests of the bosses while cutting support for children with special needs.

It is appalling that these politicians attack autistic people and others with learning differences, simply to advance a right-wing agenda. In the US, scientists and educators should be demanding the reinstatement of disability funding for children in education. In the UK, Labour and left parties should be calling for the public ownership of private SEN providers and banning councils from funding them, directing investment instead into local authority-run SEN schools.

Sadly, Labour has failed to do this and no party on the left has been particularly strong on the issue. The Green Party’s 2024 manifesto pledged £5bn for better SEN provision in mainstream schools, but if that money is channelled through local authorities without reform, it will flow into private provision, where it costs more to deliver less.

Under the new leadership of Zak Polanski, the Greens may yet change course. But socialists must make the case clearly: we must end the creeping privatisation of special needs education, ban local authorities from funding private providers, and invest in state-run SEN schools, both mainstream and specialist.

Private companies are leeches on public funds, while providing poorer services. They should be brought into public ownership without a penny in compensation. That money belongs to the taxpayer, not the shareholders who have profited enough from the suffering of children failed by a capitalist system that treats them as less than human.

The first part of this article can be found here.

[Feature picture of Nigel Farage is from Wikimedia Commons, here]