“Megan is finally getting the right MSI support at school – but I feel she’s missed out on ten years of education”
Megan Dunwell, 16, is thriving in her new special school where she has a trained multi-sensory impairment (MSI) teacher within her class – but her mum Emma Stokes, 45, fears the teenager previously slept through many of her classes and “missed out on ten years of education” because she didn’t have the expert support she requires.
Megan Dunwell
When Megan is engaged and happy, she loves slapstick humour, is very sociable, and her mum and dad know she can easily stay up until 2 am. When she’s bored, she pretends to be asleep and shuts out the world.
She is from North-West England, has MSI needs, also known as deafblindness, uses a wheelchair and is non-verbal.
In the spring of 2025, we reached out to all 153 local authorities in England to find out how many multi-sensory impairment (MSI) teachers they employ.
The number of local authorities that do not employ any MSI teachers has increased by 2% since 2021, when it was 52%. At the same time, there are now 4,630 children with MSI in England, an increase of 21% on 2021. The number of MSI teachers has clearly not risen to meet this demand.
Emma, 45, says the staff in Megan’s previous secondary special school were “really lovely”, but they were overstretched. Under her education, health and care plan (EHCP), Megan is supposed to receive 27.5 one-on-one hours with an intervenor trained to support deafblind children each week – but gradually Emma realised this wasn’t happening.
When her intervenor wasn’t available and after she’d left her role, Megan couldn’t communicate with the people around her. Emma was frustrated to be frequently told Megan had been asleep when she collected her from school. Emma often stayed up late into the evening, sometimes until 11.30pm, feeling stressed, writing emails and desperately trying to get Megan the consistent support she needed.
The Children’s MSI team at Sense helped Emma to fight for Megan’s educational rights. Eventually, last year it was accepted that Megan’s old school could not meet her needs and in September 2025, she moved to her new school, which is a 45-minute drive from home on a good day and outside her local authority.
With the right specialist support from an MSI teacher and trained intervenors, Megan now uses a symbol-based communication system to say what she wants, she’s alert and engaged at school – and the staff all know she likes Whitney Houston’s music.
Emma spoke to us:
For so many years, Megan had input from vision and hearing professionals, but nobody worked together. They didn’t seem to grasp that Megan needed someone trained in MSI to pull it all together and put systems in place so she could communicate at school and learn.
In her old school, I believe she was often just lost in her own world. She wasn’t getting the input and interaction she needed. When I was turning up at school to collect her, they were telling me Megan had been asleep. It was frustrating for me because I knew she wasn’t really asleep – she was just bored.
Now she’s at her new school and is being given the right MSI support every day, she’s much more settled and alert, and I don’t think she’s ever falling asleep, unless she’s actually tired!
Megan is now in a class of six children. There’s an MSI teacher within the class, who works with other children in the school too and is there to give advice. There are also several one-to-ones who are intervenor trained, which means Megan gets her one-to-one hours, but it’s not always with the same person, and that works well for her.
Things are now being put in place so Megan can communicate. She been introduced to a PODD book, which is symbol-based and she uses her eyes to choose things or vocalises if she’s wanting something we’re pointing to. She loves using it.
It’s good that Megan is finally getting the right MSI support at school, but our family had to go through so much stress to get here and I feel she’s missed out on ten years of education that she should have had.
It’s really hard to just move on when I know she should have developed more.
Emma’s final reflections on Megan’s education
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