SEND: MPs call for urgent action 

MPs have warned there seems to be ‘no sense of urgency’ to tackle a ‘crisis’ in support for children with special education needs and disabilities (SEND). The warning comes in a new report from the public accounts committee (PAC), who say that without action there will be a ‘lost generation’ who will leave school without receiving the help they need.

In the report, the PAC find that too many families struggle to access SEND support, and that the system favours ‘parents and carers better able to navigate an often chaotic and adversarial process liable to produce marked inequalities’. The MPs also highlight a ‘postcode lottery’, with huge variation across the country in families’ wait times for education, health and care plans (EHCPs). There are also significant variations within regions – for example in 2023 in Windsor and Maidenhead the percentage of new EHCPs issued within 20 weeks was 95.3 per cent. Meanwhile in neighbouring Slough it was just 18.5 per cent.

One driver of longer wait times is increased demand, and the MPs call on the Department for Education (DfE) to improve their understanding of why demand for SEND support has increased. In January 2024, there were 576,000 children with EHCPs, a 140 per cent increase since 2015. A further 1.14 million were receiving SEN support in schools, up by 14 per cent since 2015. The PAC also feel the DfE should more clearly define what they mean by ‘inclusive education’. A core aim of the Children and Families Act 2014 was supporting children with SEN in more inclusive mainstream schools. However, the committee complains that the DfE has not defined or set out what inclusive education should look like, nor provided specific funding for inclusivity, despite this supposedly being at the heart of its approach.

The PAC also says that the government has been unable to outline any potential solution to the critical financial challenges facing many local authorities, due to persistent and significant SEND-related overspends. They argue that ‘piecemeal interventions’ have done nothing to provide a financially sustainable system, and this poses an ‘existential threat’ to the financial status of some local authorities. The government must urgently set out a solution, the MPs say.

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP, chair of the PAC, commented:?’Urgent warnings have long been issued to Government on the failing SEND system from every quarter. This is an emergency that has been allowed to run and run. Families in need of help have been forced to spend precious energy fighting for the support they are legally entitled to, and local authorities to bear an unsustainable financial burden. The fact that 98 per cent of cases taken to tribunal find in favour of families is staggering, and can only demonstrate that we are forcing people to jump through bureaucratic hoops for no good reason. It is long past time the Government took action matching the gravity of this situation. And yet our inquiry found no sense of urgency amongst officials to do so.’

Also commenting Patrick Roach, general secretary of the NASUWT said: ‘It is clear from the PAC’s report that reform is impossible without a clear national plan that ensures the effective involvement of schools and external services such as CAMHS and social care. Essential services that were run into the ground under the last government need to be part of the solution to ending the SEND crisis.’

Schools minister Catherine McKinnell said: ‘The system we’ve inherited has been failing families with SEND children for far too long….These problems are deep-rooted and will take time to fix but we remain steadfast in our commitment to deliver the change that exhausted families are crying out for by ensuring better earlier intervention and inclusion.’

Full report: https://tinyurl.com/mt3amauk

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