I think about this a lot. I wonder if people with learning disabilities have fewer people from within the group in positions of power and influence to advocate so their collective voice is weaker? It requires people without learning disabilities to join them and amplify.

What do you see as shaming about it? I read the piece after reading your post above and thought the tone might be off, but all I’m seeing is basic reporting.

I wouldn’t have got to know either of you two brilliant people without it. Forever thankful for that.

My first ever paid article was about us figuring out two kids were sharing trousers -their mum was deciding based on timetable each day who would get to go.

Yes, no amount of posters or assemblies linking attendance to GCSE outcomes is going to change that.

Gosh. And of course the school will buy some more trousers in a heartbeat, but I know that parents will not always want to ask for help. Terrible that they have to make such decisions. Partly why I have a fairly relaxed approach to uniform.

Interesting anecdote here:

Well deserved, Richard.

Definitely. And much of our engagement with research is third-hand, at best, having been translated and paraphrased along the way.

I recall Sir Kevan Collins saying when he was at EEF that much education research explicitly excluded SEND children as they, and I quote, “contaminated the data”. I wonder how often we ask who were the subjects of the research (i.e. undergrads)?