SEND reforms are open for consultation
On 23 February, the Government published the Schools White Paper, ‘Every child achieving and thriving’, alongside a consultation document on reforming provision for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).
Councils in England have long been calling for reform of the education system to ensure the needs of more children and young people with SEND can be met within mainstream settings, where appropriate, and without the need for a statutory plan.
The LGA is pleased that the Government has acted on those calls, with an ambitious set of reforms placing children and young people with SEND at their centre.
The reforms focus on the creation of a single education system for all children and young people, with SEND integrated into the mainstream education system to ensure that support can be provided earlier. The aim is that commonly occurring needs can be met consistently in mainstream education.
For children and young people who need additional help to access education, support will be organised across two additional layers: Targeted (including Targeted Plus) and Specialist.
Specialist support will use new, nationally defined, evidence-based Specialist Provision Packages for children with the most complex needs, which will form the basis of an education, health and care plan (EHCP).
Additionally, £1.8 billion is committed over the next three years to enable local authorities and integrated care boards to establish an ‘Experts at Hand’ offer, bringing together specialists from speech and language, educational psychology and occupational therapy.
A new £1.6 billion Inclusive Mainstream Fund will also be available, enabling schools and other education settings to plan proactively and flexibly for commonly occurring needs, and encourage earlier, more effective support.
The current SEND system – including all existing duties, rights and funding routes – will remain in place until new legislation begins, and the Government will ensure these duties continue to be met.
After legislation takes effect, children with an existing EHCP will have a needs assessment as they approach the end of each phase of education. All children transitioning from an EHCP to an Individual Support Plan will retain the right to request a mainstream placement, and no child will move from a special school or college unless they choose to do so.
The white paper also focuses on improving attendance, raising overall education standards and increasing pupils’ sense of belonging at school, with a strong emphasis on reducing the attainment gap between poorer students and their peers.
Plans include two new area-based ‘challenges’ – Mission North East and Mission Coastal – building on the success in the 2000s of the London Challenge, which transformed educational outcomes in the capital through collaboration and targeted intervention.
With one in five education authorities reliant on exceptional financial support from Whitehall, the LGA is clear that tackling the SEND crisis requires a cross-government response.
We look forward to working with the Department for Education (DfE), Department of Health and Social Care, and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government – as well as partners, including parents and carers, and, most importantly, children and young people – to co-produce these reforms with a clear focus on improving outcomes. We will also continue to work with the DfE to support councils and partners to drive improvement in the existing system, ahead of these reforms being implemented.
The white paper acknowledges that reforms to the SEND system will be far-reaching and will need to be phased in over time, while ensuring that need continues to be met within the existing statutory framework.
Timescales need to be kept under review to ensure they are realistic, and there will need to be sufficient funding to build capacity now and to ensure the transition to the new system is effective.
Early years
The LGA welcomes the inclusion in the Schools White Paper of the early years, and the recognition that getting it right early for children can have long-lasting impacts.
We were particularly pleased to see the national rollout of Best Start Family Hubs, with a specific role for supporting families with SEND.
This needs to be backed up by sufficient funding for the early years workforce, and continued recognition of, and investment into, councils’ key role in supporting inclusive early years systems.
‘Experts at Hand’
The investment of £1.8 billion over three years to fund the ‘Experts at Hand’ programme of specialist support is welcome.
We await further detail on how this funding will be allocated to councils and integrated care boards, as well as the conditions that accompany it.
We also ask for confirmation that this is ‘new’ funding and is not coming from existing budgets for councils or education.
In the meantime, we are concerned that ‘Experts at Hand’ could unrealistically raise expectations about the level of support that will be available, particularly given the time it will take to embed these proposals in local areas.
Independent special schools and school trusts
We welcome the proposal to change the law on independent special schools to ensure that children get suitable, high-quality placements and that councils pay a reasonable price for them.
The LGA also welcomes the proposal to enable councils to establish school trusts. However, there is no detail on how the intention of ‘moving to all schools joining or forming high-quality school trusts’ is to be achieved.
We believe that it should be open to schools to choose to become an academy and join a trust, but would not want to see compulsion.
Other models of collaboration should be permitted if they are successful at delivering school improvement.
Financial sustainability
The Schools White Paper reforms must be financially sustainable to ensure they stand the test of time and can deliver the right outcomes for children, now and in the future.
The recent announcement that 90 per cent of councils’ historic Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) deficits will be written off is welcome, and provides councils with some breathing space while reforms set out in the white paper are implemented and capacity in the existing system is increased.
But the 90 per cent write-off implies that councils will have to manage a residual debt of around £500 million, while the Office for Budget Responsibility has forecast that new deficits of £8.7 billion will accrue over 2026/27 and 2027/28.
To ensure that discussions on reform focus solely on meeting the needs of children and young people with SEND quickly and effectively, government must commit to ensuring that all DSG deficits are written off ahead of the statutory override ending in March 2028.
Councils will also need additional funding to meet the growing need for home-to-school transport for children and young people with SEND.
- Read the LGA’s initial briefing on the Schools White Paper in full on our website. See also ‘Every child achieving and thriving’ and the consultation document, ‘SEND reform: putting children and young people first’. Consultations close on 18 May – please email your council’s submission to clive.harris@local.gov.uk.