One million children missing out on SEND support, MPs warn

A major new report from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) finds that in January 2019, 1.3 million school-age children were recorded as having SEND - 20.6 per cent of these were subject for education, health and care (EHC) plans, meaning more than one million children are not legally entitled to support despite being identified as needing additional support at school. 

The report says receipt of EHC plans has become a “golden ticket” for parents of children with SEND. 

Some 87.5 per cent of all pupils with SEND attended mainstream state primary and secondary schools in January 2019.

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The report states that: “The current structure of funding and provision gives little incentive for mainstream schools to include pupils with SEND, and budget-hit local authorities are left paying over the odds to transport pupils to the few places in state special schools, or for costly places in independent special schools”. 

Local authorities can allocate additional funding to support SEND provision at mainstream schools, but in 2018-19 only 85 of 150 local authorities had budgeted for this, according to PAC figures. 

It also finds that more than 40 per cent of permanent exclusions (44.9 per cent) in 2017/18 were pupils with SEND. Pupils with SEND accounted for 43.4 per cent of fixed-term exclusions.

It also notes that almost twice as many boys as girls are identified as having SEND, and there are large disparities between ethnic groups and across different regions.  

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Recommendations made to DfE in the report include completing and publishing the ongoing SEND review, collecting data to better understand gender and ethnic disparity within SEND pupils and reducing the number of SEND pupils excluded from school.

The report comes days after Education Secretary Gavin Williamson confirmed the coronavirus crisis would delay the SEND review and suggested that the relaxation of local authorities’ statutory duties to children with SEND could be made permanent.

Committee chair Meg Hillier said: “Pupils with special educational needs and disabilities deserve the same quality of education and to get the same value from our education system as their peers. Disturbing disparities in identifying pupils with SEND, and in provision for them, point to underlying problems that can only be addressed through proper data collection and information. These children, already facing extra hurdles and challenges in this life, must not find themselves discriminated against several times over.”