For many years, parents of pupils with additional needs have struggled to navigate the special educational needs support system – some wait years to get the help they need.
Such pupils are not part of a small group: as many as four in 10 pupils – or 12 in a class of 30 – will be identified with some type of special educational need during their school years.
Despite Ofsted identifying inconsistencies in support from place to place in a 2010 review, the government’s new SEND Code of Practice published in 2014 failed to explicitly address this postcode lottery.
Following two high-profile court cases challenging discriminatory exclusion practices and the SEND funding system in 2018 and 2019, the government announced a £700m funding package and a new review of support for SEND with the aim of “improv[ing] the services available to families who need support […] and ending the ‘postcode lottery’ they often face”.
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