Scrapping ehcp 's for children in mainstream school

[elliejjtiny]

I can't do a link on my tablet but contact a family have said on their Facebook page about ehcp's being scrapped for children in mainstream school. Not sure if it happening or just being discussed.

I have 2 dc in mainstream school with an ehcp. Dc4 has learning disabilities and is thriving with support. Dc5 has autism and is emotionally like a toddler at age 11. He wouldn't be safe at school without his ehcp. There are loads of children who are like them in mainstream school who would have been in special needs school when I was young.

I absolutely apologise to you @twistyizzy I hoped it was nonsense but I was completely wrong. I’ve signed the petition, hopefully others will follow suit.

Thanks very much for raising this op. I have already signed it and just reposting the link so we can all keep signing and sharing. They are doing so well at 60k signed already and if we all share and send it to friends and family we can get it to over the 100k they need for a parliamentary debate.

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/711021

This is too right. I agree the system at the moment is absolutely rubbish; struggled for years to get an EHCP for my son, lots of admin,
so much to fill in- but the school just didn’t have the resources to adhere to it. He didn’t get the right help either there or at college; not because the Senco wasn’t any good but because the support around them is non existent. He eventually after much ado got a yes from the panel to go to a SEN school - but there were no places! He was then placed in “holding” status at the same school. Got lots of detentions and put in isolation. Them expelled due to his bad reactions to this. It was awful- for him but also for me. I was made to feel ashamed at almost every turn. I would say the whole school experience has blighted his development. There is so much educational theory available now; we know how we should teach different children. There is no excuse. This lack of funding has to stop and the right provision needs to be there.

Exactly @Fleetheart it is just SO awful already and all this will do is make things much worse.

@Fleetheart I've seen this repeatedly the issue isn't necessarily funding though, there are usually people with skills and tips and knowledge on Sen but there's no mechanism to share those with colleagues sat right next time them.

There needs to be some directive to share these so everyone is on the same page

I read this in the Guardian this morning (and went looking for an existing thread!)

I just don't see how this is going to work. We considered moving back to the UK several years ago and a big reason we didn't was the amount of educational disruption for our two with SEN. I don't see how this is going to work at all, school budgets are so tight as it is.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/may/24/children-with-special-needs-in-england-may-lose-legal-right-to-school-support

Surely this is yet another sign of the countries decline and exacerbated by the economic harms of Brexit.

Boils down to the country cannot afford to accommodate the relentless increase in ehcp costs and after many years of "efficiency savings" the bodies involved in organising / implementing them don't have the staffing for it to be workable....with people having up fight for them for years sometimes....

Looks like the government is looking to streamline and simplify the system. Perhaps they will tighten eligibilty criteria in some way.

The problem with "tightening eligibility criteria" is the process is an assessment of needs. Many parents don't actually know what their child's needs are when we start on this process. We see the behaviour and difficulties but we don't know exactly why they are happening. The barriers to accessing paediatricians, educational psychologists, speech and language therapists etc in this country are already very, very high.

Stop gate keeping access to healthcare advice until the problems are entrenched and serious, and the educational difficulties would diminish.

This can't possibly be sorted out just by looking at the education end. NHS waiting lists of years and years are just as culpable.

This is the first ‘bomb’ of change management. Put it out there. Let there be a big panic. But because nothing is happening (yet) - it will die down. Then when the ball starts rolling - this isn’t a new idea and there will be less friction.

It’s a big puzzle that doesn’t fit together.

1. Academic success and progress being based on academic achievement via SATS/Exam results needs to end
2. Many more credible and non academic courses need to be available in every secondary school.
3. And then there is the very real changes in medical advancement that has enabled more children with complex needs to survive- the money to support them has to go to them first.
4. Health and Care joined up thinking was a theoretical good idea but it doesn’t work in practice because it placed too much outside of the educational locus of control. To reform it to something that is more educationally aligned is sensible.
5. 100,000 extra EHCP plans have been applied for in the last two years. This increase in volume would overwhelm any system.

No one wants children to be failed.

Not the parents, not the teachers, not the children and not the Local Authorities- and because of that reform is required.

I love your post because it is so well written, thoughtful, insightful and understanding of the problems. You hit the nail on the head on many counts.
Yet your final sentence has left me with a feeling of upset and despair. Because never a truer sentence has been said, yet I just cannot - genuinely cannot - ever see government or LEAs giving more thought into how SEN needs can be met in a school setting.

They want to put a better system in place to help SEND DC

You would know this if you’d bothered to read up on it

Probably not going to happen.
That said, some children would actually do better (and cause less disruption) in a more specialised school, if one could be found. I feel for all SEN parents but I also feel for non-SEN parents who see their children's education disrupted daily by the unmet needs of a SEN child who may be better in an environment actually designed for them.

The sad thing is that some schools are absolutely brilliant at looking after SEND pupils with or without an EHCP and others really struggle.

So much time and money is wasted on EHCPs as they are so admin heavy. It would be good if that money could be directly spent on support in schools That way more children could benefit.

@Sweetbeansandmochi while I doubt anyone within LAs actually "wants children to be failed", the tribunal statistics (something like 96% of appeals go in favour of the parents) suggest that they at the very least have accepted that failing children is the only thing they can do in the current situation. Collateral damage if you like. There is no other area of public life where daily, routinely, breaking the law is accepted to this level. It must do terrible moral injury to those involved.

I feel that your post, while well meaning, also makes the common assumption that all children with SEN are struggling to access the curriculum. It's the school environment that many are struggling to manage in, not the academic work (certainly a wider variety of course options would help many students, not solely those with SEN).

The EHCP numbers have gone up; of course they have. There are fewer than 5% of kids in the (English) school system who have them - and they are not evenly spread across the school system. Another side effect of all this publicity is I fear that the general public is beginning to think that every other child has an EHCP...

That's what they say, certainly.

Those of us who've suffered the current system don't believe they're capable of it, looking at the rest of their track record, and don't want our kids' legal protection taken away while they (inevitably) mess it up further.

Are you sure? As the pp said this is a way to soften any funding cuts later on.

Look at similar messaging for welfare cuts which started with it needs to change.

33 kids in my y7 class, about a third with SEND, about 6 with EHCP. I'd struggle to tell you who they were as this is one of seven classes across year groups I teach.

Concentration, attitude, ability level and behaviour have all deteriorated over the last decade.

Many colleagues have left because they don't want to be sworn at by students and parents (who are outraged we are not following every step on one kid's EHCP out of the 230 we teach).

It is untenable, soul destroying and shocking. I'd encourage all parents to come and visit for a day and then they'd understand.

I have a lot of sympathy for teachers. I think it is incredibly hard to follow some ehcps in school and no one should be sworn at for trying to do the job. I think some ehcps are badly written and unrealistic too. (Not all)

But .. do you think that taking away the ehcps will improve the situation. Is the ehcp causing the issue. I suppose because its a legal document , parents feel it should bd followed and get cross it isn't. But all the different send in your class will still be there, the concentration, behaviour etc won't improve, people will still complain.

@Renamedyetagain sounds tough.

I'm a teacher as well as a mum of a child with an EHCP. I can see it from both sides.

The whole system at the moment operates on a weird "don't ask, don't tell" kind of set up which massively disadvantages less educated, less strategic parents and certainly doesn't reward teachers (or heads) who do take it seriously.

At the very least, parents should be able to compare schools by their SEN outcomes when choosing a (mainstream) school. As an "insider" I could do that. Most other parents are just guessing and hoping for the best.

It would be so interesting as a parent (and as a classroom teacher actually) to see how SEN money from the local authority is spent. Or if the local authority in fact paid it to the school in the first place. Parents have no right to know those things at the moment and schools don't have to report on their SEN spending in the way they do pupil premium spending.

Schools can check if the money has been paid - I know because my DC has had an EHCP in place for six weeks. There is provision as part of that EHCP which requires paying for immediately but the school has checked and the money hasn't been transferred. As a parent, the only person I can contact is my caseworker, which I have done repeatedly, but who just tells me she is chasing it.

For schools to cost out the exact provision for some children would be very difficult to quantify due to the poor wording of EHCPs. A child in my class requires an adult to be with him constantly to keep him safe but this wasn't written into his EHCP so he doesn't get funding for it. He gets the equivalent of less than half a day's adult support. The wording is things like "adults should play alongside him and attempt to engage him in adult-led activities for short periods." It's not as if you can then leave him without 1:1 support for half the day though as he will climb on things or run out of the classroom.

You are "lucky" you have a case officer! I've never met or even spoken to any of ours, and the LA has only provided a name when they absolutely had to (tribunals etc) and it was a different name each time. The person "attending" the annual review, I have never heard of.

This is what SEN parents are dealing with.

The notional budget is an opaque mystery as far as I can see!

It is an enigma wrapped in a mystery!

And at the top level the LAs are slicing off the main schools' grant to top up the "high needs funding block" and yet there we are in the classroom (as a pp vividly described) with 33 kids, 6 with EHCP, probably the same number who should have them but haven't got the "right kind of parent"/weren't lucky in their primary school, and mysteriously there is no money actually on the ground.

But do we think released money would actually end up in the classroom?

It is probably the BREXIT bus all over again.