The “national conversation” on SEND reform has ended, and everyone who has an interest in supporting children and young people with SEND is waiting with some trepidation for the Government to publish its much-trailed schools white paper.
But why have there been so many national reviews, consultations and conversations on the SEND system in the last few years, and what are policy-makers hoping for?
The same questions keep being asked, and the same answers keep coming back. It is well past time for some political leadership on SEND. Are ministers going to make the current education system work for children and young people with SEND as it should, or reduce what children and their families are legally entitled to? Will every child continue to have the right to an education that meets their needs, or will they have to accept what’s on offer and either sink or swim?
At IPSEA, we have been saying this since September 2019, when the Conservative government announced a “major SEND review” five years after the introduction of the Children and Families Act 2014. The timing of the review (ahead of the publication of a highly critical Education Select Committee report chaired by Robert Halfon MP) suggested a pre-emptive response to findings that were expected to reflect significant concerns about government policy and practice.
Halfon’s cross-party committee, which received over 700 pieces of evidence, many of them from families, pulled no punches:
“The system is not working – yet. There are clear and fundamental problems that need fixing now, not left waiting on the outcome of another review. Apparently random examples of children getting good support are not enough. A reliance on relationships, luck or family circumstance is not enough. Families are in crisis, local authorities are under pressure, schools are struggling. And they cannot wait for the outcome of another review: they have waited patiently for long enough.”
This was back in 2019: children and young people and their families had waited long enough. How can they still be waiting?
But waiting is what families of children and young people with SEND simply must do. We waited for the previous government’s SEND review to reach its laborious conclusion – delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic, during which all bets were off for children getting the support they needed – and were rewarded with the “Right support, right place, right time” green paper in March 2022.
The green paper looked fairly innocuous at first but was in fact a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”, proposing an overhaul of the SEND and alternative provision system that would have entailed dismantling substantial sections of part 3 of the Children and Families Act 2014, leaving children and young people with fewer rights to support that met their needs.
It didn’t survive the consultation that followed or the churn of children’s ministers as the Tory government headed towards electoral oblivion. The “SEND Improvement Plan” and “SEND Change Programme” were, as far as families were concerned, just background noise.
Evidence on what was happening, or not happening, for children and young people with SEND continued to mount up. The National Audit Office carried out several major reviews, concluding in 2019 that:
“Pressures – such as incentives for mainstream schools to be less inclusive, increased demand for special school places, growing use of independent schools and reductions in per-pupil funding – are making the system less, rather than more, sustainable.”
Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission have published summaries of the overall findings of their local area SEND inspections, and Ofsted draws conclusions every year about support for children and young people with SEND in its Chief Inspector’s annual reports. Common problems identified include long delays in accessing support, inconsistent or ineffective local partnerships, poor quality EHC plans and poor engagement with parents.
None of this is the fault of the legal framework under which schools and local authorities are required to operate.
The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman has also added to the picture, shining a spotlight on SEND provision. One in four complaints to the LGSCO are now about SEND, with the Ombudsman finding local authorities to be at fault in 92% of all SEND complaints investigated:
“A situation where we are upholding nearly 100% of complaints cannot be one that is working for children and their families.”
Before the current government came into power, they had the opportunity to read and digest huge amounts of information and analysis. They had the opportunity to enter government with a plan to protect and strengthen children and young people’s right to an education that meets their needs, and zero tolerance for unlawful practices. While it’s admirable that they want to hear from families and education professionals, the nature of the problem has been well-documented for years, and the time for action was years ago.
So now we wait to see what conclusions have been reached. When asked about whether children and young people’s existing rights to an education that meets their needs will be protected, ministers carefully say that: “children with SEND will always have a legal right to additional support.”
But this statement is not the same as committing to retaining the existing statutory right to support that meets a child or young person’s particular needs. It raises more questions than answers.
The risk is that children with SEND will be expected to manage in mainstream schools without the support that would make it possible for them to thrive and make progress, and schools will struggle without essential specialist input.
In the end, the key to resolving the SEND crisis lies in applying the law and not watering it down. Reducing statutory rights may reduce what’s available for children and young people with SEND but certainly won’t reduce their needs.
