At the end of February, I was delighted to go down to London to meet the Children’s Commissioner for England, Dame Rachel de Souza.
The other ambassadors and I for 2026 got a chance to meet and discuss our goals and ideas for the coming year and received some vital training for our roles. It was so insightful to hear from some of the other members about their passions, with some including better access to mental health and stronger efforts to combat cyber-racism.
On 18 March, I had the amazing opportunity to sing on stage at Wembley Arena with Cockburn MAT Choir at Voice In A Million 2026, in support of adoption and fostering, to raise money for Adoption UK. This was an incredible experience for all students involved, but also raised money and awareness of such an amazing cause – it was an honour to be involved.
March has been a very interesting month for anyone working in education or with SEND young people, as the new Department for Education (DfE) White Paper came out, titled ‘Every Child Achieving and Thriving’. This paper brings promises of a reduced disadvantage gap, an expansion of technical and career education, and drastic changes to SEND support. These are explored below.
The government wants to reduce the achievement gap between students from disadvantaged backgrounds and everyone else, with the aim of students from low-income backgrounds achieving approximately one whole GCSE grade higher than they currently do.
This also aims to bring a further 30,000 disadvantaged children above the pass grade for English and Maths each year, leading to more opportunities in work. With the current government’s focus on free breakfast clubs, the DfE also proposes better integrated support systems (such as free breakfast clubs and improved early family support) to ensure every student at school arrives “ready to learn”.
The white paper also brings big reforms to the national curriculum, with a larger focus on embedding disciplinary skills and furthering career education to bridge the gap between education and the workplace. As part of this plan, the government aims to have every young person in secondary education complete two weeks of work experience to support the transition to employment.
Finally, the biggest focus of the white paper is on better integrated accessibility and inclusivity for young people with SEND in mainstream education. The proposed National Inclusion Standards aims to bring high-quality, adaptive teaching to mainstream settings, integrating SEND support in all lessons, as opposed to separating SEND students from the rest of the school. Additionally, EHCPs will be further down the support system, focusing on supporting only those with more complex, long-term needs.
Initially, this brings up the question of the quality of earlier support, such as Individualised Support Plans (ISPs), raising concerns of how standardised SEND support will actually be for those with less complex, but still important, needs.
Over the next few weeks, I will be working with young people and groups across Leeds and Yorkshire and Humber to gather views and questions on the proposed reforms.
I’ll also be attending some sessions with decision-makers and policymakers to ensure our voices are being heard in the execution of the reforms. As always, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
March has been an amazing month, and I was so delighted to go down to London twice for different events! Looking forward, I am so excited to continue my work within my community and bring the voice of the people to the national scale, and I can’t wait to see what April brings in my world of Youth Voice and Disability Advocacy.
Mikey J Marsden MYP is a youth voice representative, disability advocate, and one of three elected Members of Youth Parliament for Leeds alongside Zaina Khan and Priscilla Basil.
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