Sir Keir Starmer’s overhaul of the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) system is finally out.
But it seems much of the educational world, while broadly positive today, is withholding its final verdict as there’s still so much we don’t know or have not fully digested.
We don’t know whether the money to create special needs provision in every school will be enough.
Number 10 said there was no additional funding beyond the already tight spending review settlement last summer and half of the £7bn transformation pot was announced as long ago as November 2025.
Unions say some of the sums involved will not allow schools to realise the scale of what’s now expected of them.
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We don’t know exactly how many children in future will – and won’t – qualify for the highest levels of support and funding.
Nor have we yet seen the specific, tougher criteria that could be put in place to obtain an Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs). This is a huge gap, and could ultimately determine how MPs vote later this year.
And we don’t know where the staff to support special education needs in mainstream schools will come from, at a time when teachers and teaching assistants are leaving the profession in higher numbers, with 90% of teachers going before retirement age.
But we do know one massive change that is taking place: Bridget Phillipson is turning an existing nightmare for local councils into a potential problem for individual schools and their headteachers, just as they juggle so many other challenges.
File image: iStock
At the heart of today’s SEND reforms is a plan to steer children with special education needs away from specialist schools and back into mainstream settings, thereby reversing the result of government policy over the last 12 years.
Under this plan, fewer children in future will receive the highest level of support, involving legally enforceable EHCPs which are granted by councils who must allocate specific pots of money for each pupil with a plan.
But by 2028, it will largely be schools who will triage children who are identified as having additional needs, replacing the existing legal fight that often takes place between parents and councils and moving this discussion to one between parents and teachers.
At the moment, almost 500,000 of the 1.7 million pupils with SEND have a legally enforceable EHCP, but this number is expected to increase at a slower rate under these proposals.
But under another part of the reforms, every single child with special educational needs must undergo an assessment and will be given legally enforceable rights.
According to the note published today for schools from the Department for Education, every school will be obliged to provide new Individual Support Plans (ISPs) for all children with SEND, “a digital record of the child’s needs and day-to-day support provided by their school and developed in partnership with parents”.
It adds that schools must also take charge of retaining and improving EHCPs “for children with the most complex needs”.
The scale of this task is massive, both in numerical terms and in terms of the parent-teacher relationship, since no headteacher wants the invidious task of telling parents their children cannot get the support their child wants.
And the numbers here are huge. This means giving legally enforceable plans with rights attached to the 70% – one million plus – children with additional needs who do not currently have them.
The government acknowledges this is a “radical expansion in rights and support for every child” – a huge expansion of the tricky business and bureaucracy of assessment and evaluation.
And what if things go wrong and parents disagree with headteachers?
In the first instance, the school complaints process will be updated, with an independent SEND expert added to the complaints panel, where there are concerns around a school granting an ISP, or the content of the ISP. Given the new legal rights of parents on ISP, this ultimately could end up in court.
In time, money that used to go to help individual pupils will now be “rebalanced” to general school SEND budgets.
“After legislation, funding will be rebalanced from the high needs block, giving schools greater control over how they support children with SEND,” says the Department for Education, raising questions about just who the winners and losers will be in future.
But just how far will money go? Teachers are today told all staff will benefit from national SEND training, backed by over £200m over three years. But with just shy of half a million teachers, will £420 per teacher over three years provide enough to transform every education setting to make it suitable?
There are some groups – like those representing autistic children – already sounding the alarm bell. More hardline unions are warning about the lack of cash. Ms Phillipson stressed the need to make the system work better.
But until everyone understands the most difficult part of this reform, it cannot yet be guaranteed a safe passage through parliament.
