This is a brief commentary. (Regretably), I don’t have time to look at the proposals in detail. The Minister responsible is trying to spin the reforms as being designed to ‘fix’ the SEND system. She has to do this to get it past spend-hungry Labour backbenchers who are genetically opposed to reducing public spending, regardless of the level of over-spend and debt that involves. So; we are being told that the Reforms will, in the long run, save money, while improving “outcomes” for SEND children. Which is, of course, an inherently unlikely story.
What are the reforms?
One of the key reasons for the massive overspend by local authorities on SEND is the system of EHCPs. These are legally binding documents which require a local authority to provide a specific care package. The orders are made by an ‘independent’ Tribunal, regardless of available budget. The Tribunal simply looks at the parent’s demands, (obviously there is likely to be an industry around helping parents prepare their cases for the Tribunal; I saw one middle-class parent talk about an investement of thousands of pounds preparing their case), and makes what it thinks its a “fair” decision based on the child’s needs. Naturally enough the tribunal makes awards which have substantial cost implications, beccause how the award is going to be implemented is not their problem. I find it amazing, even in this world of organised state-corporate money laundering, that this problem is simply not part of the public discourse on this topic, The reforms seem to vaguely try to address this; the bar on getting an EHCP will be higher and awards will be subject to review. But, as far as I can see, the principle of awards being made regardless of available budget still stands. This is a case of “the rights of claimants” trumping rationality. No responsible finanical auditor could conceivably pass this policy and yet no one dares question it.
Alongside the higher bar for EHCPs the other major part of the reform seems to be an injection of cash, £4 billion is mentioned, into schools to help them develop infrastructure and services to support SEND students in mainstream schools. This compensates for the fact that less children will now have an EHCP, though they will still have some kind of lesser statement. More special places are also promised, but this appears to refer to the increased provision in mainstream schools. I don’t see any intent to do anything about the problem of high costs of private special schools. As always, the reporting is terrible. There is the usual lack of detail; most reports are just shouty headlines designed to sway the public one way or another, without engaging reason or rational debate. This Guardian report is slightly better than most. It appears the £4 billion is for the next 3 years. That gets us nicely to the next election! After that, the deluge. It is brazen and shameless. (It is out of scope for this article, but, without a doubt, one of the advantages of ‘authoritarian regimes’ is that the stability of government allows them to implement long-term plans not subordinated to the electoral cycle). Whoever wins the next election will have to find another £5 billion to keep this going, over the lifetime of that parliament. (To put this £4 billion in perspective; recall that durring Covid the government/corporate regime stole/laundered £40 billion on the pointless from a point of view of public health ‘Track and Trace system’. This money went into the coffers of large consulting firms and their shareholders, never to be seen again).The government has also promised to clear much of the accumulated debt off local authority balance sheets; this is another £5 billion. The Minister may be hoping that some aspects of the reforms, which seem, for example, to give local authorities slightly more power to direct children to certain specific special schools will reduce the spirallying special needs transport bill. However; I don’t see any direct measures to confront this head-on at least based on media reporting. [1] The reforms also include a committment for SEND spending to be moved to the central government budget, [2] though I am not sure if this would include spending on SEND transport costs.
The last measure is clearly a sensible one, which will prevent local authorities from going bankriupt. The 60,000 ‘special places’ is not clear to me. This is what the government says: [3]
Taken alongside the building blocks the government has already put in place, including training for every teacher and 60,000 new specialist places, the government’s reforms will end the postcode lottery of SEND support that too many families experience, making sure more children – regardless of need – can attend their local school.
Children shouldn’t have to travel miles every day just because there isn’t a good school that can meet their needs locally or be separated from learning with their friends because their needs can’t be met in a mainstream classroom. This exactly what this government is turning around.
As far as I can see then the 60,000 places are in existing mainstream schools. The idea is that because children will be able to go to mainstream schools and indeed to their local school there will be less costs in terms of taxis and perhaps in provision in special schools. From a finanical point of view the government is trying to leverage existing resource, schools and teachers, to reduce the spend. Children who previously a) went to a special school, and/or b) by expensive taxi and/or c) had expensive provision in mainstram schools are now going to be fielded by retrained treachers and new inclusion units in local schools. These latter are to be funded by a one-off three year injection of a small amount of money, £4 billion. Schools are being told to use an existing capital works budget stream for any new buildings for the new ‘inclusion units’.
Is this going to work?
In a word; probably not. The promised injection of funding is only for three years; money will have to be found in the future to continue to support these new ‘inclusive’ provisions. The new buildings will require maintenance. The core problem of EHCPs being awarded without reference to budget constraints remains, though the scale of the problem is reduced. Likewise, forcing children to go to the local mainstream school will reduce the taxi bill somewhat; but the problem is not tackled at root. The solutions are weak. The hard decisions are avoided. They are trying to get a fix without upsetting anyone. They are trying to pull off a piece of magic. The magic is to shift provision for all but the most demanding levels of special need into local mainstream schools. Teachers will be trained and money provided, for 3 years, to support new inclusion units in mainstream schools. This is how the Minister sees this working:
Children and young people with Send will spend time in classrooms with their peers, experiencing enrichment and stretch, with a specialist area down the corridor for the points in the day when a smaller group would better meet their needs. [4]
There are two obvious problems with this, (apart from the cynical fact that the funding is only for 3 years – after me the deluge). These are:
- Working with special needs students is a vocation. Not everyone has the ability or wish. Not something that a quick training course can fix.
- There are a group of ‘special needs’ students to whom the Minister’s remarks pertain; these are those who form part of the explosion in the “diagnosis” of special needs over the last 10 years. But the reality is those who are actually autistic will not fit into her plans.
To expand on the second point. Children who are actually, really, autistic are not susceptible to sitting in a class and, (you have to laugh at the corporate language), being ‘enriched’ and ‘stretched’. The small groups is equally fantasical. Who is going to run this? The author of this article has worked in multiple special schools and colleges as well as in mainstream settings supporting special needs students. To take this idea of “smaller groups”. I worked in one special school, in a primary class, of a group of 6 or 7 special needs boys. This was the top-performing class. (In special schools, unfortunately and by necessity, there is a grading of classes based on severity of the limitations of the students). Some of the boys in this class were probably capable of ‘normal lives’ – that is, with a little support, holding down a job and living at east semi-independently. Even in this class, of 6 or 7 boys, there was a teacher, I would assume with a vocation and serious professional training, and, I think 3 or even 4 teaching assistants. There were also a host of other sessions and activities in the school which children could be taken to, sensory rooms, crafts activities, music play, and so on. One boy, with more profound limitations lay in the corner occasionally shouting. Staff did not / could not engage with him much. If the Minister’s plans have any sense at all surely it is these ones who are now going to be educated in mainstream schools? I don’t see it working at least without far more resourcing than appears to be envisaged – basically moving the special school into the mainstream school.
The reality is there is a kind of child to whom the Minister’s vision applies. These are those who are not really autistic but who are now getting autism diagnoses. And those ‘with ADHD’ – the fake psychiartic-pharma condition which is experiencing an enourmous explosion at the moment as a result of a strong marketing campaign. The set to whom the Minister’s vision applies are those with these modern ‘soft’ forms of special needs; probably not hardware (genetically) determined. These ones probably can be fielded by her new regime. Though it would be better, perhaps, to enquire why so many parents want to get their children “diganosed” or why society is so keen on differentitating people. In other countries, this ‘cohort’ is just assimilated without fuss or special plans and ‘diagnoses’, as they used to be in the UK thirty years ago. Have we become more caring and “better at diagnosing” as the promoters of this system claim, or have we become just more eager to be disciplined, or to have our children, disciplined by a scientifically dubious pharma-psychiatric consortium running a permanent marketing campaign?
The danger of the new proposals, apart from the obvious fact that they would fail any serious finanical audit, is that children who do not have profound learning difficulties or autism, but who nonetheless do have actual autism, will be diverted into this new system – where they will be totally failed. In as much, however, as this is tried, it won’t work. I immediately think of children I have worked with in mainstream primary schools with special needs; two come to mind in particular. Both needed full on 1 to 1 attention. If they came into the class they would be likely to disrupt it, for example kicking over other children’s constructions. One was verbal, one was not – or not very. But, these children did not have a ‘profound’ disability. The new regime may mop up some of the new ‘soft’ special needs children but either leaves actual special needs children in the position they were before, or worse. For this reason, it is likely to fail. The same level of actual special needs provision in special schools will still be needed. This is not some “once in a gernation” reform of the SEND system, with new support for SEND children. It looks more like a sticking plaster solution to mop up the excessive strain on the system caused by the new trend to diagnose children who are only marginally “divergent”.
Notes
- https://www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/send-home-to-school-transport-costs-for-councils
- https://www.lgcplus.com/finance/send-costs-to-shift-to-central-government-26-11-2025/
- https://www.gov.uk/government/news/specialist-send-support-in-every-school-and-community
- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/feb/23/special-educational-needs-send-reform-bridget-phillipson
