Every so often a petition lands in my inbox, and lately they seem to arrive in a steady stream, asking me to sign, share or follow a campaign for better special needs training for everyone who works in schools. I always agree with the aim. Everyone in a school interacts with children, from the front desk to the dining hall to the classroom, and everyone benefits from understanding SEND.
But as I wrote in Speaking and writing quietly into the abyss (Ross, 2021) for SEN Magazine, the striking thing isn’t the petitions. It’s that we still need them. The same argument has been running since the Warnock report in 1978, and here we are, still making it. I’ve been asking the question for years: has anything really changed?
A gap that keeps being noticed and not fixed
Teachers are explicitly expected to adapt their teaching and to use approaches that engage and support learners with SEND. That expectation is written into the standards they’re held to. Yet teachers at every stage of their careers routinely say they feel ill-equipped and under-trained to do it, and the evidence backs them up rather than the paperwork.
When I reviewed the support systems for young people with specific learning difficulties for the Council for Science and Technology (Ross, 2020), the picture was consistent. Teachers didn’t feel they had the knowledge to adapt their lessons and resources for the range of needs in front of them. Trainee teachers received neither consistent quality nor consistent duration of SEND input. And Ofsted itself acknowledged in 2020 that quality across initial teacher training providers was inconsistent, with some providers not even having SEND expertise available to support their trainees. Part of the issue is by design: the framework that shapes teacher training deliberately avoids detailing approaches for specific needs, in the name of “quality-first teaching”. The intention is reasonable. The effect, too often, is that new teachers finish their training without ever being taught how to support a dyslexic child.
It isn’t for want of anyone pointing it out. Back in 2009, the Rose review argued that schools should have access to specialist teachers to support literacy development. More than a decade on, the same gaps were still there when I wrote my review. The arguments don’t change. Neither, for the most part, does the situation.
What I’ve recommended
I’m not interested in simply restating the problem, so here is what I’ve actually recommended, in the CST review and elsewhere.
Training on the four areas of need set out in the SEND Code of Practice should be delivered through compulsory modules within initial teacher training, so that every teacher receives high-quality input rather than a lucky dip depending on their provider. Ofsted, which controls the quality and accreditation of that training, should formally inspect the SEND and SpLD training that providers deliver. And SENCo training should include a genuine specialism in one of those four areas of need, rather than assuming a coordinator can be expert in everything at once.
Alongside that, the case for a specialist dyslexia teacher in every school, or every cluster of schools, is overwhelming, as I’ve argued drawing on the Human Cost of Dyslexia report. Sector bodies have made complementary proposals worth supporting too: mandatory continuing professional development leading to a recognised award in dyslexia and SpLD for new teachers in their first couple of years, and holding training providers to account for the quality of the SEND training they deliver. Awareness-raising is not the same as training someone to teach.
What schools and teachers can do right now
Structural change is necessary, and I’ll keep lobbying for it. But no teacher should have to wait for the system to catch up before they can help the child in front of them, and a surprising amount is within reach today.
Make lessons dyslexia-friendly as a matter of course. Adapting your slides and resources so they’re clear and uncluttered helps dyslexic learners, and it helps everyone else too. Turn on the accessibility features already built into Office 365 and Google Workspace, which cost nothing and are already installed. Use the free, good-quality CPD that’s out there, from MOOCs, Seneca, Microsoft Learning and others, to build your own knowledge without waiting for a budget.
And keep working with families to find what an individual child actually needs, focusing on the small things that can be revolutionary in their impact: visual timetables, wriggle breaks, a soft copy of the slides, printing on coloured paper. None of these needs a policy change. They need knowing about, and doing.
I’ve written a fuller, practical guide to these in integrating dyslexia support into mainstream teaching. If your school wants to build staff knowledge properly, that’s exactly the work I do through training and consultancy and my courses and guides.
The bottom line
The training gap in SEND is not new, it is not the fault of individual teachers, and it will not close on its own. It needs structural change in how teachers are trained and supported across their whole careers. Until that arrives, and to make it arrive sooner, the answer is twofold: keep making the case loudly, and get on with the many good things we can already do in our own classrooms. Teachers at every stage need proper, ongoing support to do this work, so that they can be their best, and help their learners be theirs.
Questions people often ask
Do teachers get trained in dyslexia and SEND? Some do, but provision is inconsistent. The framework for initial teacher training deliberately avoids detailing specific needs, and Ofsted has acknowledged that quality varies between providers. Many teachers finish training feeling under-prepared to support SEND, and say so.
Whose job is it to fix this? Responsibility is shared. Government and training providers need to build SEND properly into initial training and ongoing CPD, and Ofsted needs to hold providers to account for it. Schools can invest in staff knowledge and specialist support in the meantime.
What can a teacher do without any extra training or budget? Quite a lot. Make resources clear and uncluttered, turn on the accessibility tools you already have, use free CPD to build your knowledge, and apply the small, high-impact adjustments that help the whole class.
Would a specialist teacher in every school really help? Yes. A specialist can support learners directly, guide colleagues, and carry out assessments, so that identification and support don’t depend on a family’s ability to pay. Training one costs a fraction of what’s currently spent on tribunals.
References and further reading
- Ross, H. (2020) Review 2: The support systems for individuals with SpLDs, Council for Science and Technology. Read the review
- Ross, H. (2021) Speaking and writing quietly into the abyss: SEND and inclusion training for teachers, SEN Magazine, 114, 32-33. See the full list of publications.
- Ross, H. and Hicks, J. (2019) Managing Dyslexia as a Family, in The Human Cost of Dyslexia (APPG for Dyslexia and other SpLDs). Read the report
- Ross, H. (2017) An exploration of teachers’ agency and social relationships within dyslexia-support provision in an English secondary school, British Journal of Special Education, 44(2), 186-202. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8578.12174