Regarding Jill Runnette's letter about special schooling. The law states that all children must be educated in a appropriate school setting which can meet their needs and help them reach their potential.

If this law was not in place, special needs children would often be left to fail at school and in life.

Even now, SEN children are placed in mainstream schools, unable to follow the curriculum and disturbed by their surroundings.

As a result, they can disrupt the education of other children, are more likely to be bullied, more likely to be excluded and more likely to develop mental health problems.

The alternative is to be placed in special school which is wholly unsuitable for many children for a variety of reasons. For able pupils, state special schools do not offer a challenging curriculum and there is no access to GCSE courses, for example.

Parents also have a legal right not to have their child placed in a special school against their will because many perceive it to be an unacceptable level of social segregation.

When there is no proper provision made by the local authority for able but complex, special needs pupils to access suitable state school settings, then parents have no option but to invoke the law and place their children where they can be protected and where they can learn.

The result is that taxpayers in Merton are funding schools which cost between £20,000 and £150,000 per annum per child (depending on the type of school), adding up to millions in Merton alone.

These are only a small percentage of the children who are not having their needs met in the state system so the real cost of this lack of provision is much greater still.

Understandably, these figures are concealed from the public as far as possible.

If taxpayers understood the magnitude of this expenditure and that some of this could be saved by forward planning and investment in high quality local provision, perhaps the special needs agenda would receive a greater political profile from all citizens, not just those with a direct vested interest.

If the local authority were forced into investing long term in proper provision, families of special needs children could be saved the gruelling, complex and stressful processes which they currently have to negotiate, marriages would be salvaged, children would develop better life skills and society as whole would benefit.

The moral case for change here is equally as strong as the financial case.

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