The Education Committee’s recent Solving the SEND Crisis report offers cautious hope. The parliamentary inquiry acknowledges the exhaustion of families, the adversarial nature of the system, and the lack of consistency across schools and local authorities. The report recognises that rebuilding trust is essential and that inclusion must be embedded, not incidental.
Yet hope must sit alongside realism. The Committee highlights the continuing absence of a national definition of inclusive mainstream education, the systemic reliance on formal diagnosis as a gateway to provision, and the precarious state of local authority budgets. Without decisive action, these unresolved issues risk undermining the best of intentions.
The Children’s Commissioner’s latest school census, The Children’s Plan, adds to this picture with stark data. It shows that pupils with SEND are still disproportionately excluded, placed on reduced timetables, or missing from school altogether. Absence rates remain high, and too many children with additional needs are effectively invisible within the system until crisis point is reached. Taken together, the two publications paint a picture of a system that is recognising its failings but has not yet secured the structural reforms necessary to embed inclusion in practice.
One notable gap in both documents is the absence of any reference to children who are both gifted and have additional needs, known internationally as dual or multiple exceptional (DME) learners. Their experiences illustrate why definitions of inclusion must be carefully framed. DME learners often encounter misunderstanding because their advanced abilities and their challenges obscure one another. A child excelling in one subject may at the same time require significant support in another, yet such complexity can remain invisible to schools and to the data that drives accountability.
The omission does not diminish the value of the recommendations, but it does highlight what is at stake. A national definition of inclusion that does not account for asynchronous development remains incomplete. For inclusion to be equitable, it must embrace the full spectrum of learner profiles, including those whose needs and potential intersect in complex ways.
Equity cannot be equated with sameness. It requires systems that respond to diversity within diversity, policies that enable schools to stretch ability while scaffolding support, and accountability mechanisms that value more than narrow attainment or attendance measures. For DME learners, equity means being seen in their entirety, not reduced to either their strengths or their difficulties.
This has wider implications. DME learners are an indicator of whether the system is genuinely inclusive. If mainstream education can adapt to meet their needs through flexible curricula, teacher training that prioritises complexity, and timely access to specialist support, then it is more likely to be capable of meeting the needs of all learners. If it cannot, the ambition of inclusive mainstream education remains aspirational.
The Education Committee is right to insist on national standards for ordinarily available provision and SEN Support, on strengthening teacher training, and on rebalancing accountability. The Children’s Commissioner is right to highlight the scale of exclusion and absence. Yet both publications leave unanswered the question of how inclusion will embrace learners who defy simple categorisation.
Equity in inclusion demands a definition where each and every child’s potential is recognised and nurtured alongside their needs. For some this will mean ensuring their differences or difficulties do not eclipse their strengths and talents. For others, it will mean identifying vulnerabilities hidden behind high performance. Either way, the ability of the system to support DME learners is the real measure of whether equity in inclusion has been achieved.
Final Thought
If your school, service, or organisation is reflecting on how to make inclusion truly equitable for learners with complex profiles, our consultancy can help. We work with families, educators, and professionals to deepen understanding of high learning potential and dual or multiple exceptionality, and to turn that insight into practical, sustainable support.
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About the author: Natalie Jensen is the Advice Services Lead for Potential Plus UK, a parent of HLP/DME children, an Early Years Teacher and a qualified Specialist in Gifted Education and Care through the European Council for High Ability (ECHA), where she is also an active member of the Special Interest Group Empowering Families.
