SEND - children’s needs to be reassessed from year 6 2029?

You don't know what has been tried though! I honestly used to think the same, and then I had my own disabled children. They have severe learning disabilities so we get beaten with the 'soft parenting' stick (slightly) less often. I used to use traditional parenting, firm boundaries, etc etc and it just did not work. It escalated and escalated and everyone was miserable.

It's only now that I have been immersed in the community fully for a decade, have had intimate access to SEND families' lives (because most of our friends have SEND children), that I can truly understand.

Are the government trying to to say though that needs such as this will be met automatically rather than only via EHCP? The feeling I get I that it may be easier to access support needed without the cost of an EHCP ?

At the end of the day you can’t not provide provision for SEN. If you do everybody loses:- other pupils, the SEN gets worse, prisons fill up, MH needs get worse, there’s more reliance on benefits, less tax being paid…

It’s in everybody’s interest to make send a priority and to provide good provision.

That depends what we mean by results.

My son won’t pass his GCSE’s, but he has learned a great deal at school. His communication is vastly improved, he is emerging onto the EYFS curriculum, he can recognise shape and number. That progress is a result.

For others, their child is able to engage with education because their physical needs are catered for, and if that wasn’t the case their education wouldn’t be happening. Their children being able to access education, is a result.

This is a great idea.

Then there should be a basic online package with self lead tuition offered. They can take it or leave it, and do it at their own pace.

I don’t understand the timeline either. DS has an EHCP and we applied for his secondary school before the rest of the LEA through the special needs team rather than the LEA portal.

I’m lucky with the school I sent him to - they have made so many adjustments for him and it could have been a nightmare going from a one form primary to a school that has 300 students in a year group.

My son is a wheelchair user and if his EHCP is taken away because he's in mainstream, he won't be able to physically enter school either because his 2:1 support would end and he can't push himself in his wheelchair.

You are the one talking absolute rubbish. There is a whole government program designed to try to stop the high numbers of autistic people ending up in inpatient- Dynamic Support Register .

Research and data show that
autistic people are significantly more likely to be admitted to and "stuck" in inpatient mental health hospitals compared to the general population. While autism is a developmental disability, not a mental illness, many autistic individuals end up in these units, often due to a lack of proper community-based support.
Springer Nature Link +3
Key Findings on Autism and Inpatient Care

• Over-representation: A meta-analysis estimated that while autism affects roughly 1% of the general population, autistic people represent approximately 10% of patients in psychiatric inpatient settings.
• Increased Admissions: In England, the number of autistic people without a learning disability in mental health hospitals increased by 116% between 2017 and 2024.
• Long Stays: Autistic people often face extremely long, inappropriate, and sometimes damaging inpatient stays, with average lengths of stay reported at over 4.5 to 5 years.
• Youth Vulnerability: Autistic youth are hospitalized for mental health reasons at dramatically higher rates than their non-autistic peers, accounting for 36% of admissions compared to 21% for non-autistic youth.
• National Autistic Society +4

• Lack of Community Support: Many are admitted not because they need hospital-level care, but because of a lack of appropriate social care, housing, or specialized community support.
• Crisis Situations: Autistic individuals may be in crisis (meltdown/shutdown) and are sent to hospital because community services cannot manage their needs, often leading to them being "stuck" in hospitals for years.
• Misinterpretation of Behaviors: Staff in general mental health units may not be trained in autism, often interpreting sensory overload or extreme stress as "challenging behaviors" requiring sedation or restraint.
• Diagnostic Overshadowing: Co-occurring conditions, such as anxiety or schizophrenia, are common, and in some cases, the autism itself is mistakenly treated as a mental illness that requires detention.
• National Autistic Society +5

If the aim was early intervention then the government would introduce screening for things such as ASD routinely then real early interventions ideally before age 5 or as early as possible could make a huge difference.

If the colossal amount we are currently spending is not ‘meeting their needs’ we never will, and need to get the costs under control as it’s not even producing results.

Same here. I started primary in 1996 and we had SATS, weekly spelling tests, CATS (anyone remember those?!) and learning ‘sets’. Secondary had uniform inspection (complete with a ruler to measure skirt length and baby wipes to remove offending makeup!), teachers shouting, Saturday detention and 1,200 students.

I don’t recognise these cool, chilled, devil-may-care schools of the past.

This isn't about what is best for children though, is it? It's about trying to save money.

There isn't a "cobble along" option for a child who cannot enter the school premises because of the overwhelming sensory overload and trauma that they experience there when there are no adjustments. Refusing to make adjustments for a child who cannot enter the school premises due to how they are affected by ASD is ethically exactly the same as refusing to make adjustments for a child who cannot enter the school premises because they are using a wheelchair and the school is up a flight of stairs. The latter case is clear discrimination and the LA must provide a place at a school that is wheelchair accessible. A child who is highly intelligent and capable of getting qualifications but who cannot cope with the noisy and busy atmosphere of being in a room with 29 other kids is still entitled to an education and we cannot say that we are providing them with an education if all we are doing is making a place available for them in a classroom that they cannot bear to be in and which makes them ill.

When I was at school, I remember spending time doing PE lessons, music lessons that involved lots of movement, an art project that was making and painting a giant Noah's ark in the corner of the classroom - movement breaks were part of the lesson plan, even if not called that.

My kids state primary is like this. There's a big focus on play, music, movement. Its an ordinary one form entry school. Despite this stuff it still has seen a massive increase in children with ASD & Adhd diagnoses.

Ok well watch Kelly Bright’s Panorama on iPlayer. Etta’s mum - very nice caring lady, a loving mum but flailing around with zero boundaries allowing herself to be pushed around by a 6 year old. Seems utterly unconfident and almost nervous of her.

Err one thread on MN does not speak for all or even a proportion of families trying to manage SEND.

This is my worry. We had to choose an independent special school because there were no other appropriate state schools. With this potential cap on funding I’m now worried it’s going to go bust.

DD’s primary has all that now.

Agreed. My number one rule is assume anything the LA tell you is utter nonsense.

"Sorry but that’s rubbish. The last ‘asylums’ closed in the early 80s, all this ‘they were locked away’ stuff is just a myth."

No it's not.

A few years ago I was told that if my son needed support beyond a certain ratio then he could not live in the community.

Because schools were better funded so such children had better support. Support they don't get now. There was less pressure from the likes of Ofsted on academic attainment and as someone else said, we had more art/music/pe etc. Proper lunch breaks and two play times a day. Personally I think better education funding in general would be more effective than more SEND funding (and for any send funding to actually be ring fenced and someone checking where it's going).

I'm not sure reading one anonymous thread will change the perspective I formed from working with or for many real families.

Have a read of that thread.