RECAP Guest Blog: School is the Vehicle, Not the Destination

Lucie Wheeler
Aug 10
4 min read

Smiling woman with wavy brown hair in a pink sweater stands against a gray wall.

Emma Jones is a SEND consultant, SpLD teacher and Associate Lecturer in Education. She delivers inclusion and neurodiversity training to health and social care professionals and is a trustee for Space4Autism. Her work focuses on improving social understanding and advocacy for neurodivergent people.

Emma is passionate about inclusion and ensuring every child's right to a high-quality, enjoyable and relational education.

I quit my job as a mainstream class teacher and SENDCo for many reasons, but by far the greatest was the feeling that I was always failing children. I was trying to put out the fire from within the house. I couldn’t defend children against a failing system whilst I was still part of it. So, I branched into SEND roles that allow me to have a wider systemic impact, alongside teaching roles that let me support children as individuals.

Whilst in school, I fought desperately to stop children getting lost in the system. Many found their way with the right support, but a few still stand out as particularly heartbreaking because of the extent to which the system made them look broken, when it was that same system at fault.

Hands laying orange bricks with gray mortar using a trowel on a construction wall.

It has always fascinated me how we, as adults, naturally gravitate towards different careers, lifestyles and environments. Some people thrive in offices, but others couldn't imagine anything worse. Some need constant variety, whilst others love routine. Some build things with their hands, and others spend their days analysing data. We accept these differences as perfectly normal. In fact, society depends on them.

Yet when it comes to children, we often expect the opposite. We place them in the same environment, ask them to learn the same things, in the same way and at the same pace, then wonder why some flourish while others struggle.

The same contradiction exists in the way we think about movement and behaviour. Adults fidget, doodle during meetings, make endless cups of tea and wander over to colleagues' desks because that's how many of us regulate our attention. Some choose physically demanding jobs because sitting still all day would drain the life out of them. Yet children are often expected to remain seated for hours, and some are punished for responding to the same needs we quietly accommodate in ourselves.

Our curriculum reflects a similar desire for uniformity. There is, of course, value in ensuring every child leaves school with a broad foundation of knowledge. Literacy, numeracy and a shared understanding of the world open doors and help people participate fully in society. But beyond that, it becomes harder to justify expecting every child to learn the same things, at the same time, in the same way, regardless of their experiences, interests or developmental stage.

Row of yellow rubber ducks lined on a white surface outdoors, with numbers 112, 152, 1883, and 869 printed on them.

As adults, we're usually comfortable acknowledging that we're all different. We know our strengths, our weaknesses and the environments in which we do our best work. Yet when we assess children, those differences often become deficits rather than differences. When we combine all these layers of standardisation, we create a system in which some children have little chance of thriving, despite the extraordinary efforts of the adults around them.

I've seen exceptionally talented children spend hours in interventions designed to close gaps, when the system had simply failed to recognise where they already excelled. I've seen children labelled as underachieving when they were developing at a different, but equally valid, pace.

The hardest cases are those who struggle not only academically but socially and emotionally. Again, these children are often offered interventions to fix them when they were never the problem. They are fish out of water and their flailing is inevitable.

Of course, interventions absolutely have their place. Helping a child develop literacy, communication or social understanding can transform their opportunities, provided that support is delivered in a child-centred, inclusive way. Educators work incredibly hard to give children the best possible chance. But I often wonder how much easier life would be if we spent less time changing children to fit the system, and more time changing the system to fit children.

There was one conversation I had repeatedly with several families in my time as SENCo:

"Will my child always struggle like this?" a parent would ask.

"No," I would say. "I genuinely don't think they will."

"I think they'll leave school, find an environment that values the way they think, and realise they're actually very good at something. They'll find people who appreciate them, work that suits them and a place where their strengths make sense."

I believed that every time I said it.

The difficult part was knowing that, before they reached that point, they still had years left in a system that often measured them by how closely they resembled everyone else.

Red notebook on a wooden desk reads Be brave Be bold Be beautiful Be you, with pencil, clock, tea cup, and leaf shavings.

This all sounds extremely negative, but recognising this problem also points us towards a solution. Rather than asking only how we can help a child pass their Year 6 SPaG test or achieve a particular GCSE grade, we should spend more time asking a different question:

Where is this child trying to go?

Not because childhood is simply preparation for adulthood. It isn't. Children's lives matter now. Their friendships, interests, wellbeing and sense of belonging are every bit as important as the people they'll become. But school was never meant to be the destination.

The curriculum, assessments and qualifications are vehicles. They are tools that help children travel. Sometimes they're exactly the right vehicle. Sometimes they need adapting. Sometimes another route will get a child much further. If we mistake the vehicle for the destination, we end up measuring children by how well they fit school, rather than asking whether school is helping them become who they are.

For some children, the most useful route will be an academic one leading to university. For others, it might involve vocational learning, creative pathways, supported employment, entrepreneurship or skills that don't fit neatly into a national curriculum. Some children need alternative ways to communicate what they know. Others need more time. Others simply need adults who can see beyond the next assessment point.

The destination is different for every child.

School is the vehicle, not the destination.

Our responsibility isn't to produce children who fit one narrow definition of success. It's to build an education system flexible enough to help every child travel towards a future that is uniquely their own.