Government’s ‘generational’ SEND reforms will leave more children in segregated settings

The government’s “generational” reforms to the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) system will increase the proportion of children in “specialist” placements over the next nine years, despite ministers claiming they are moving towards more “mainstream inclusion”.  

Bridget Phillipson said this week that children with SEND would finally get the “right to be included in their local state schools”, with the government investing “billions of pounds in mainstream schools to make them fit for children with SEND”, and with “more children educated at a great local mainstream school”.

But the 125-page SEND consultation document issued by the government alongside its schools white paper makes it clear that the reforms will see more disabled children educated in segregated settings, even though the government says in the white paper that it is “committed to creating a more inclusive mainstream school system”.

Many of these disabled children will be educated in specialist units in mainstream schools, but even the proportion of children in special schools will not have fallen by 2035.

The consultation paper – SEND Reform: Putting Children and Young People First – says: “By 2035 we expect that the proportion of school children in a specialist placement will be higher than it is now, but that more of them – around a quarter – will be in commissioned Specialist Bases in mainstream schools.

“This rise in numbers of children in Specialist Bases will mean that the proportion placed in special schools will return to around today’s levels by 2035.”

The schools white paper – Every Child Achieving and Thriving – makes clear how 14 years of Conservative-led governments have damaged inclusive education, saying: “More children are being educated in specialist settings now than at any time in the last half century, alongside more moving into unregistered alternative provision or home education attributed to unmet SEND needs.”

The Alliance for Inclusive Education (ALLFIE) this week raised “serious and urgent concerns” about the government’s plans, which it said failed to meet its commitment to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (see separate story).

In its initial response to the consultation, ALLFIE said the government’s plans would continue to “reinforce segregation” of disabled children and young people by rebranding SEN units in mainstream schools as “inclusion bases” and describing this as “progress”.

Ministers said that every secondary school would eventually be expected to have an inclusion base, with an equivalent number of places in local primary schools.

The consultation was launched as the government released new research which showed that disabled children with an education, health and care plan (EHCP) in mainstream schools achieved on average 0.56 grades higher across their combined English and maths GCSEs than comparable pupils in special schools between 2011-12 and 2023-24.

The consultation paper says the government will spend £1.6 billion on making the mainstream system of schools, colleges and early years settings more inclusive over the next three years.

And it says it will spend £3.7 billion over four years to create tens of thousands of new places in inclusion bases in mainstream settings, make buildings accessible, and create new special school places.

It says all staff will receive SEND training, while it will develop new national inclusion standards, and every school will have to publish an inclusion strategy.

It will also spend £1.8 billion over three years to create a bank of specialists such as SEND teachers, speech and language therapists and educational psychologists in every local area “which schools can draw down from on demand”.

Its changes to EHCPs – the focus of much of the fear and controversy over the reforms in the last year – suggest a return to something closer to the system that existed before EHCPs were introduced by the coalition government in 2014.

The local authority will decide whether the child should have an assessment of their need for an EHCP.

EHCPs will in future be available to children who need “more intensive or complex support than schools can routinely provide”.

Fewer children will require an EHCP, with those with lower support needs receiving “targeted” and “targeted plus” support in mainstream settings, which appears similar to the pre-2014 system of statements, “school action” and “school action plus”.

Under the government’s plans, all children with SEND will have a legal right to a new individual support plan (ISP) – reviewed at least annually – which will set out barriers to learning, day-to-day provision, any reasonable adjustments they need to be made, and intended outcomes.

The government said the ISPs would be “easily available, without a fight, thanks to the government’s multi-billion-pound investment in services like speech and language therapy and small group teaching in schools”.

The legal entitlement to support in an EHCP will be based on a “specialist provision package” – such as curriculum adaptations, access to physiotherapy and augmentative communication devices – but these children will also have an ISP that sets out out exactly how that specialist package of support will be delivered by their school or college.

New laws will establish that only those who require a specialist provision package will need an EHCP, so for those with “less complex” support needs “the norm will be that the setting makes the provision required, and there is no need for a statutory assessment”.

Full implementation of the reforms will not begin until 2028-29, while all existing EHCPs and protections will remain in place until at least September 2030, the consultation document says, and no child will move from their current special school or college unless they choose to do so.

SEND tribunals will continue to offer an “important legal backstop” for parents who want to appeal decisions about their child’s support, but they will be a “genuine last resort” because “strengthened mediation services and an improved complaints process” should mean concerns can be “resolved earlier and more collaboratively”.

The white paper says the government expects that the proportion of children with an EHCP – currently 5.3 per cent – will continue to rise, but at a slower rate, until 2029-30 and will then return to the current rate by 2035.

There will also be caps on the fees that independent special schools – 30 per cent of which are backed by private equity firms – can charge local authorities to ensure they are “fair and reasonable”, through a system of “clear national price bands and strengthened standards”.

Currently, independent special schools charge an average of £63,000 per child per year, which is more than twice the £26,000 cost of a state special school.