Oh yeah, my preferred course of action is way harder to do than opening lots of units.

Trust is the key issue whatever happens

I imagine they'll try a bit of both, but doing one creates incentives to do less of the other.

I hope they get the mitigations right and make it work but am wary.

My preferred approach is 'more mainstream places in mainstream schools' where mainstream is as inclusive as possible, plus a small but well resourced special sector.

Yup. Expertise in the SEND space is worse than in non-SEND - so we need to keep as many children out of it as we can.

This is a brilliantly provocative way of putting it

We all want to meet needs, the question is how to do that. As Ben points out, a lot of the approaches to doing this are snake oil - but snake oil that might be convenient for school leaders and attractive to parents.

So there's a real risk additional and different, in practice, means bad.

Thanks - I'll have a look

Yes. That's another big risk

The 'resource base of expertise within school' is a much better concept

I hadn't actually considered demand for units might be driven by parents but yes, we might well end up there.

I imagine the safeguards would have to be various bureaucratic bits plus our darling inspectorate, and neither of those is thrilling.

These are risks, not inevitabilities. Govt can either shift emphasis (my preference, not hugely likely) or develop robust safeguards (we should all push for this).

You might well be right on this - and I hope the schools white paper shifts the accountability incentives and structures in this area

And I wonder if this is the case, is that the wrong way around?

If only because, as with so many things, if there isn't a settled and functioning consensus on this as we get to whatever government comes next... That would be bad.

Absolutely right @samfr.bsky.social.
I'm this contradiction entirely. I know the system well. It's a binfire. Huge amounts of money are being wasted. But I'll defend my daughters ehcp to the hilt because I have zero faith the system will reform in a way that benefits her fast enough..

That's horrendous

Sadly I think it's more likely they go through life seeing the deficits as being in themselves.

Yep - it's this stuff that will be looked back on as the VAK of its day.

Building schools that are inclusive for all (or as many as possible) by design rather than bolt-on faddish additional and different, is where we need to end up.