SEND Consultation: Young Peoples’ Views

In early May, children in England in their final year of Primary school will be completing standardised tests (known as SATs) in Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar (SPaG), Reading, and Maths. Campaign activity from More Than a Score has highlighted that these tests fail children with Special Education Needs and Disabilities (SEND).

This week, in particular, Music Mark recognises the significance of responding to the SEND consultation, to take steps towards realising the government’s vision for young people with SEND, as outlined in the school’s white paper: Every child achieving and thriving.

Our members can make a purposeful contribution because the most important responses come from those with lived experiences or professional expertise. We created this digest to help pinpoint a specific question or a selection that you could submit a response to.

The consultation closes at 23:59 on 18th May 2026. Respond to the consultation.

To ensure that our response represents the views of young people, Music Mark has gathered responses from 11 young disabled musicians from Drake Music’s Future Leaders programme and the National Open Youth Orchestra. This was a paid opportunity for us to learn how to represent the voice of disabled young people in this and any future consultation response. Their thoughts are insightful and valuable in helping us ensure ‘every child is achieving and thriving’ in music education.

We have summarised some insights from the young people in this easy digest summary, and the key takeaways are:

• Consultation forms like this are overwhelming.
• The 39 questions appear daunting.
• It is not clear who the intended respondents are for different questions.
• It took considerable time to complete (we capped this at 2 hours)
• There is new terminology to understand. It is not clear if your experience is relevant.
• Young people want to be heard.
• Decision-making needs to be made more accessible.
• Young people want things explained clearly, in plain English, for themselves and others.

The full responses from all 11 young people (from Drake Music’s Future Leaders and the National Open Youth Orchestra) are available here. We recognise that this is a text-heavy document; these responses are provided as source material for the ‘easy-digest’ summary, and for those interested in deeper research into this topic.