Since the 2014 reforms of the SEND system, which saw SEN statements replaced with education, health and care plans (EHCPs), the number of children and young people with EHCPs has increased by 140 per cent over 10 years.
A further 1.2 million children in schools are identified as requiring SEN support below the level of a statutory EHCP, up from 990,000 in 2015, according to a report by the Isos Partnership commissioned by the County Councils Network (CCN) and the Local Government Association (LGA).
Based on substantial engagement with councils, schools, health partners, young people and parents, the study concludes that the current system is not working for families, schools or councils.
It outlines how councils are struggling to cope with a more than doubling of children on EHCPs, describing “perverse incentives” to shift responsibility between public bodies which “inadvertently creates adversarial relationships between local authorities and parents”.
It finds a system “weighted down by legal disputes through tribunals and an over-reliance on special schools due to a loss of parental confidence that mainstream schools can meet their children’s needs”.
A separate report by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman finds that a quarter of the ombudsman’s work is taken up by complaints about the SEND system.
The Isos Partnership report warns that outcomes for children and young people with SEND “will not improve and the system will become even more financially unviable for councils”.
It estimates that local authorities are projected to be spending £12bn a year on SEND services by 2026, but will still face a £5bn funding black hole to meet demand that year.
“Those deficits are currently being kept off councils’ balance sheets, but if they were to be placed onto their accounts, one in four councils surveyed for the research said that they would cease to be solvent within a year or less: a significant financial cliff edge,” states the report.
The CCN and LGA are calling on the new government to invest in building capacity in mainstream schools to meet children’s needs, “such as therapists, educational psychologists, and wider inclusion support, helping to reduce the reliance on specialist school places”.
It also recommends resetting the vision and guiding principles of the SEND system towards inclusion, prevention and earlier support “which would cater for young people who do not have a statutory plan, with such plans reserved for the most complex cases”.
Authors state that the previous government’s SEND and AP Improvement Plan, published in 2022, should be replaced by “a more radical programme of reform”.
This should include new national framework for SEND and establishment of Local Inclusion Partnerships to enable more effective assessments, commissioning and collaboration between councils, schools and health, they say.
Councillor Tim Oliver, CCN chairman, said: “The case for reform is unquestionable.
“With a new government in place and elected on a ‘change’ platform, it is vital that reform happens over the next 18 months.”
Councillor Louise Gittins, LGA chair, added: “We are calling for action which builds new capacity and creates inclusion in mainstream settings, supported by adequate and sustainable long-term funding, and the writing off of councils’ high needs deficits.”
Last week, the Department for Education announced that barriers faced by children with SEND in mainstream schools are set to be central to a government-commissioned review of the school curriculum.
