As recently as 2022 in a study for BERA, Professor Denise Miller found that ‘higher education students with overlapping intersectional identities (that is BAME and SEND) are much more likely to encounter specific forms of interpersonal and micro aggressive discrimination simply because of their BAME identity.’
In 1971, Bernard Coard published a report entitled ‘How the West Indian child is made educationally subnormal’. In it Coard explores the history of Black Caribbean pupils and the fact that they were more likely to be placed in ‘remedial’ schools or classes. We could argue that not much has changed over the last 50 years since the book was released. Yet, despite the more urgent calls for increased awareness around racial inequalities following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, Education in England does not seem to have moved forward very much.
In fact, exclusion rates are now 5 times higher for Black Caribbean boys than their white counterparts and they are more likely to be diagnosed with SEMH (social emotional mental health) needs as their primary SEND need.
The SEND review green paper: right support, right place, right time, was due to be published in summer 2017. A green paper is meant to detail pertinent and pressing issues, then point out courses of action in terms of policy and legislation. By the time, the SEND green paper was eventually published in March 2022, the issues of intersectionality around race and SEND had become a prominent topic, but there was not one mention of this in the green paper.
In England, standardised baseline tests on entry are widely used to test academic ability but not so much to identify SEN needs. There is an argument now for SEN tests to be included as baseline test on entrance to both primary and secondary schools.