(UK) Bedfordshire: 52 special needs students have no school places this year

Aug 25, 2021, Bedfordshire Live: Central Bedfordshire parents to protest as 52 disabled children miss out on special school places https://www.bedfordshirelive.co.uk/news/bedfordshire-news/central-bedfordshire-parents-protest-52-5824417

Parents of 52 special needs children with no special school place are set to protest Central Bedfordshire Council. The council has received strong criticism after a Bedfordshire boy with autism missed over a year of school due to council failures. A damming Local Government Ombudsman report said: "This case is yet another example of a child being deprived of their rightful education because of poor council practice." The protest is being organised by the Central Bedfordshire SEND Action Group - a group of parents whose children have been told there are no specialist school places available for September and won't have their children's special needs met in mainstream education. The action group said: "Central Bedfordshire Council leaders are catastrophically failing children with special needs."… A petition with nearly 400 signatures called for an extraordinary meeting of the children's services committee to address this issue…. "If these were mainstream children, the council would be going to any lengths to accommodate them. Children with SEND have a right to a suitable education and Central Bedfordshire is catastrophically failing in their legal duty to provide this to many children." Central Bedfordshire Council did not provide a comment but previously said: "We recognise our SEND services are not as good as they should be, and we have been working with partners to transform these services over the last year….