Special educational needs and disabilities – better known in the media these days by the punchy acronym SEND – are a hot topic in education. For a long time considered a marginal issue for disruptive children, the discourse has shifted in recent years as parents have pressured schools into better accommodation for young people with neurodiverse conditions, like autism, ADHD and dyslexia. It is the last of these which has found a champion in the form of TV chef Jamie Oliver, whose crusade on behalf of Britain’s dyslexics is captured in a new Channel 4 documentary, Jamie’s Dyslexia Revolution.
“I’ve been doing this for 20 years,” Oliver tells a room full of assembled politicians. “I’ve been through 17 heads of education and many, many prime ministers.” He is referring, of course, to his 2004 campaign to reform school dinners, which made him, briefly, the most hated man in Britain’s schoolyards. It wasn’t just children who critiqued his advocacy: he was accused, too, of being part of a wealthy elite propagating top-down paternalism. And yet for all the political and social change since the start of the millennium, Oliver’s televisual persona has remained the same. An approachable Jack the Lad, no controversy seems capable of denting his portfolio career, including countless television shows, wildly successful cookbooks and novels aimed at children, and a restaurant group. And this has all been achieved while struggling with a form of dyslexia that makes reading and writing a challenge for him. “You’re probably better at reading than me now,” he tells his eight-year-old-son. “And I’m the second biggest author in the country.”
And so, donning the same hat he used to eradicate turkey twizzlers from school cafeterias, Oliver sets off to raise awareness of how dyslexic children are being failed. The statistics are worrying: 10 per cent of the population are believed to be dyslexic, and, when rolled up with other neurodiverse conditions, that number rises to 25 per cent. More shocking still is the show’s claim that 50 per cent of the prison population is dyslexic, which feels, instinctively, a direct corollary of the fact that 90 per cent of excluded children are neurodiverse. SEND parents – who have become one of Britain’s most powerful lobbying groups – will know all of this, but for the lay viewer the figures will be troubling.
Equally concerning, however, is the lack of answers. And this is an area where Channel 4 and Jamie Oliver struggle to make inroads. Jamie’s Dyslexia Revolution involves much rumination on the current state of play, but the mooted insurrection of the education system is harder to pin down. Earlier intervention seems important (children are not assessed until they are eight, and even then, it is not mandatory), but what then? More training for teachers, similarly, is highlighted, but the nature and application of that training remain elusive. It is no bad thing for Oliver to simply use his platform to raise awareness of an issue, but when you call it a “revolution”, it feels like there should be some clearer glimpse of the promised land.
Because, as the show suggests, there is little appetite to throw more money at the education system right now. A room full of Britain’s politicians show their support for the endeavour (including Liberal Democrat MP Adam Dance revealing that dyslexia-related bullying caused him to attempt to take his own life as a young person), but commitments remain vague. Education secretary Bridget Phillipson, when she appears, looks like she’d rather be anywhere else. “Will we be seeing some radical, strategic restructuring of teacher training?” Oliver asks her. She lethargically straight-bats his questions. “Money alone isn’t enough,” she mumbles, perhaps thinking of the multimillion-pound bill left to town councils by the collapse of Oliver’s restaurant chain. “I think we have to reform the system.” But reform, like revolution, is an easy word to say, and a harder one to enact.
And so, at the climax of Jamie’s Dyslexia Revolution, as a crowd of supporters assemble outside parliament, there’s an air of optimism. SEND support has never been higher on the political agenda, and Oliver, one of the most effective agitators in Britain, has played his part in this. But the show mirrors the great challenge of modern politics. It’s far easier to identify problems – to point to injustice – than it is to locate their solutions, and, in doing so, initiate the sort of change that a revolution requires.
