"It's the Hunger Games": SEND children are being failed in mainstream schools

The government has pledged more money to improve special needs education – but desperate families say the whole system needs overhauling.

For a year, Freya turned up at primary school and was illegally restrained – not because she was a danger to anybody, but because the effort of masking her autism in the school environment made her want to run back to her mum every morning. For her, the mainstream education system became a source of trauma.

Freya is just one of the 1.7 million children i…