On SEND reforms, this useless government finally has something sensible to say

This government is not known for taking on intractable challenges. Social care reform has been kicked into a second term via the appointment of Louise Casey to head a review that will not produce recommendations until 2028. There are no ideas to address the student loan crisis. Number 10 backed off its attempts at welfare reform under threat of backbench rebellion.

So, Bridget Phillipson deserves credit for trying to address the crisis in provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Government leaks suggest that she will set out her proposals for reform in a white paper early next week.

There is no doubt that the system is in desperate need of reform. Children with SEND are simply those who have significantly greater difficulty in learning than their peers, or whose ability to access learning is affected by a disability. That might be because they have social and emotional difficulties, issues with speech and language, or neurodevelopmental disorders like autism or ADHD.

It’s not about labels: the education system is supposed to recognise these needs, whether or not a child has a clinical diagnosis. Schools are expected to meet the needs of children with lower levels of additional need (around one in 7 children) from their own budgets. Children with higher levels of need (approximately one in 20 children) are given an education, health and care plan (EHCP) that outlines their legal entitlement to specialist provision, such as a specific amount of one-to-one support, along with additional local authority funding.

Children with additional needs suffer from poorer outcomes when they leave school, and the gap has failed to narrow in recent years. It’s a significant blip on the generally positive picture of increasing educational standards in England over the last fifteen years, as measured by international benchmarks. Too many children with SEND leave school without functional skills, despite the total amount of spending steadily increasing in recent years.

The number of children identified as having special educational needs has increased over the last decade, but nowhere near as fast as the rate of children who have been assessed as eligible for EHCPs, which has more than doubled since 2016.

This will partly be as a result of the growing number of children experiencing difficulties post-pandemic and increasing rates of diagnosis for conditions like autism and ADHD. But since 2010, it has become increasingly difficult for schools to meet the additional learning needs of children from within their own budgets, as their own finances and support services for children outside school have fallen victim to austerity.

Without an EHCP, children with additional needs can get overlooked. But as any parent will tell you, securing an EHCP is an emotionally exhausting and adversarial process, with local authorities gatekeeping limited funding pots that cannot hope to meet the needs of every child who needs the extra support. Some parents resort to paying for private assessments and for lawyers to try to help them navigate it.

It’s a terrible system that fails the children it is supposed to help. As general school budgets get tighter, more gets spent on assessments and appeals. Educational psychologists spend more time assessing children than working with them. And as more children get EHCPs, what they buy declines: on average, their value has fallen by a third in real terms over the last decade.

More money is spent on policing boundaries, less money on children with significant needs, despite their numbers increasing. And the fact that there is insufficient support for children not yet in the ECHP system means children with additional needs risk becoming increasingly disengaged with education, falling further behind, before they can access the support they need. Meanwhile, the OBR has forecast that the SEND budget will be £6bn in deficit by 2028 based on current trends.

Phillipson’s touted reforms are broadly sensible. The government wants fewer children in the EHCP system, and more children catered for through school budgets. This would, in theory, shift the balance away from assessment and more towards provision, by increasing the threshold required to get an ECHP, and also reassessing children when they move from primary to secondary school.

The problem with delivering all this is that parents’ faith in the system to meet their children’s needs is at rock bottom. Restricting legal entitlements at a time when schools are struggling financially is an almost impossible sell. The government plans to assuage these concerns by attaching some legal status to children with SEND who don’t meet the threshold for an EHCP, although it is very unclear what that might mean in practice.

This could end up proving just as tricky for the government as its ill-fated welfare reforms. Backbenchers’ postbags are almost certain to fill up with concerns from frightened parents; a significant rebellion is not off the cards. In both cases, there is a strong long-term case for reform. But reforming the system without putting any more money in upfront – either for children with SEND, or to support disabled people locked out of the labour market back into work – dooms reforms to be perceived as little more than cost-cutting exercises.

Whether or not she can shepherd these reforms through Parliament will undoubtedly be the biggest test of Phillipson’s career.