Over a decade ago, and after nearly 30 years of policy changes and legislative reform, we sought to take stock of progress in the provision of effective education for disabled children and young people and for those otherwise defined as having special educational needs (SEN). We brought together leading thinkers from a range of perspectives in the field and asked them to consider ongoing challenges and opportunities in a series of chapters for our book, Education, Disability and Social Policy.

This revised and updated second edition considers progress and revisits those challenges and opportunities, as well as new ones that have arisen since then. We have returned to some of the original authors to consider developments on the topics they covered in their chapters, and have also included several new voices to consider other themes that were not as visible to us, or which have surfaced since the first edition; such as school exclusion, the intersection of SEN with race and racism, and the increasing prevalence and understanding of the social, emotional and mental health needs of young people, which has driven much of the increase in demand for support.

While we were writing the introduction to the first edition in 2010, a general election resulted in a change in government. After 13 years in power, Labour were defeated and replaced with a Conservative/Liberal Democrat Coalition. In turn, this resulted in a new approach to SEN policy which sought to combine disconnected twin manifesto commitments of meeting the needs of every child and ending the supposed ‘bias towards inclusion’.