Leaks in the press about reduction in send spending

[Perzival]

I haven't seen a thread on this so thought i'd start one.

Over Christmas some newspapers inc the Times and Telegraph have leaked reports that the Government intend to tackle the cost of SEND by only issuing EHCP's to those children with the most severe needs. School's (mainstream) will then be responsible for meeting the needs of those with "moderate" or "minor" (not my wording) needs. Appeals to sendist by parents will be restricted (i'm guessing to those who still have an EHCP) and schools will have to liase with the LA regarding the needs of the other children requiring support.

To avoid drip feeding, my ds has severe/complex needs and attends special school, he'll never be able to live alone....

I have really mixed feelings about this. The current system is causing some LA's to go bankrupt, schools are already massively underfunded, lack of special school places, time it takes for tribunal and don't have the specialisms required but i also see huge waste like the removal of LA owned transport in preference for taxi contracts, the cost of inde provision (not disputing need but wish there was a way for thatto be provided locally by LA's without the profit margin) and the cost to families for professional reports from inde speacialists for tribunal / section f- provision.

If this goes ahead what will happen to the kids who will be failed? What impact will it have on the kids without send in classes with more children with unmet send? If something doesn't change where will the money come from for send with some LA's already blamimg SEND for bankrupsy?

I'm not looking for a discussong rather than an argument. The SEND groups can be an echo chambre so looking for different views.

https://www.specialneedsjungle.com/leaks-denials-fake-conversations-not-inspire-parental-confidence-send/?fbclid=Iwb21leAPInu5jbGNrA8iej2V4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHrItacXo4jijUu3mrF_32165ExI-sVCsVWcUNjc49IsMqP3NOT7kEg3neK8j_aem_AOqVBm2C3Uk7R5u6D-3GIw

I don’t know what the answer is.
Sadly, my experience is that even when you do eventually have an EHCP for your child - it atill isn’t followed. So either way our children will be let down.

I’m fighting hard for my daughter. As I always will, but it has taken over my life and I can’t believe it’s been this hard once the EHCP was finalised.

I have uncovered so much via SAR’s and the fact I was patient and trusting for 6 months. The system is broken. I just hope it doesn’t break me, and my lovely kid.

Do we have any idea when this much awaited send white paper is going to be released? It was due to be autumn but then delayed. Is it any day now?

I presume these online meetings they've been holding are to 'get parent views' first though anyone I know who have been on one (parent and staff) weren't allowed to speak or access the chat to ask questions so it's very much a closed shop.

Well they have to otherwise they would be paying the private school fees for the kids with ehcp’s in fee paying schools where the LA was unable to meet their needs.

I wouldn't claim to represent all non SEN parents by any means, but I think my views are reasonably common amongst the general population so I think it's useful to contribute to threads like this that can become a bit of an echo chamber.

I think we need to be realistic and sensible about how we best use the resources we have available to us as a society. What is clear is that we have a very difficult public finance situation where we have a huge deficit and crippling debt. The tax burden is already high. No magic pot of money is going to appear. Demand for Sen provision is exploding with an increase of 150% in a decade for ECHPs. It is clearly an unsustainable situation.

There isn't an optimum solution for any of this. Realistically we have to accept that we can't meet the needs of all children in the way we would like to. Currently we are funding an ever growing number of ECHPs and yet the employment rate for young people with disabilities and especially learning difficulties is troublingly low. As someone with a disabled relative, this was absolutely my experience. They received a very expensive 'education' at schools and colleges that were far away with super expensive state funded transport provided but the skills they learnt were never going to be sufficient to work or even live independently. I often ponder if this was good value for money? It seems particularly questionable when there doesn't seem to be a plan for what happens after the education has finished. What was the objective and aim of it all? Babysitting is an offensive term but sometimes it would be sensible to be honest about the amount of 'education' being delivered in some cases versus simply managing difficult children in safe settings.

I understand and probably agree with your views that the current system is expensive and not giving good outcomes and reasonable does change.

But Im not convinced that the suggested leaks will cost less So I suppose I am interested in why you feel these specific changes leaked will reduce costs.

If the leak that ehcps will be restricted to special school is true. This is because the assumption is only the most severe sen goes to special school. When actually there is a huge overlap . I literally have non verbal children who only respond to light and sound in my mainstream school. I also know children at special school who are sitting 5 gcses. The system isnt that neat.

They are talking of raising the threshold for support because schools will become more inclusive. I actually think schools can become more inclusive and I think as mainstream provision got worse, the need for ehcps rises, so this must be reversible but it might not save money. It might just mean the same money spent differently. So pupil funding goes up by £500 a head and SEN funding goes down by the same amount.

I can see that shifting responsibility away from parents and LA to schools will create a triage system so schools will push the children they think have the most need rather than those with the most able parents. But again I dont know if this will reduce costs.

My disabled son is in mainstream but can only manage because of his EHCP and 2:1 TA support. Mainstream wouldn't be possible for him without his EHCP and I'm assuming he wouldn't be considered 'severe' as he's in mainstream.

It terrifies me to be honest. I just want him to be able to access education like any other child his age, it really shouldn't be this hard.

Reasonably required' isn't some definitive objective threshold. Reasonableness is inherently subjective and the threshold needs to account for the financial reality we find ourselves and the demand for resource versus the resources available.

BTW I'm not picking your post apart, just commenting. Like I say I don't have the answers. Except early intervention and the cutting of that has had its part in this mess.

What's "reasonable" is currently decided by the appeal system..it's a Royal court of justice Judge and two expert witnesses on a panel. It's not mum aserting her child could do with some help. A expert has the final say on what's reasonble.

My son has dyspraxia and dispite it being very common, it varies in severity. So his balance is 0.01% bad enough to get him DLA. Not all dyspraxics ( sp sorry dyslexic here) will meet DLA threshold. Some dyslexics cope but struggle in mainstream. Others are illiterate.i have dyslexia and a degree. Kids at my sons SEN school with dyslexia can't read or write aged 11 with high IQs. It's not really comparable.

You end up at appeal as a last resort.

Not all SEN kids get the 'reasonable' thing either. You'd think it was reasonble to educate my son in mainstream with occasional nhs OT and SaLT advice. But it was stopped and blocked to save money. Then he was moved to independent specialist in year 5. He is still there in year 13. How this saved my LA money or was the most reasonble adjustment IDK. Some of the problem is short term savings and logic failures. Ds had all the support in mainstream at a low cost. To save money it was all withdrawn. He made zero progress and fell behind and ended up in indi sen. So what was the NET saving? My LA agreed to this placement. To me it's pure insanity. One LA SEN manager gets a bonus OBE for making savings that a few years down the line makes the LA bankrupt because those cuts meant those kids could no longer access mainstream.

Another example. My other son was non verbal at 7. He only started speech therapy aged 4.5 as you only get speech therapy with a EHCP. He then ended up in a indi SaLT school. How much cost was a few hours of speech therapy a month before five v a lifetime of indi SEN schooling? My health visitor passed him on his three year check ( he said nothing) and told me he was a lazy boy with a big brother who talked for him).

It's not just the number of kids with SEN. It's insanity of it. Kicking the cost down the road.

Who pays to support all the kids who fall out of education? They don't disappear at 18. What we need is a joined up holistic approach. Ideally one where SEN is seen and accepted at a early age and yes resource Base in mainstream sounds lovely but that needs trained staff and cash. My dds school resource baee is all years in one class with a TA not following the curriculum. This builds a issue for future ( secondary) you saved some cash and kicked the can down the road. At secondary? Expel them. Then what? Where do they go then? Say we don't care as long as it costs penny's but they don't cease to cease at 18.

I fear the white paper is can kicking. We need early intervention and provision that's accessible from the off. Maybe something low cost like proper resource bases in mainstream. I have no idea. Or more mainstream units. But mainstream units will never be the full answer unless we want my ds aged 13 with the mental age of 6 in your child's GCSE class taking up the majority of the teachers attention.

Careful what we wish for. Who wants SEMH kids in their mainstream kids class?

Sorry I don't want to dominate the thread so this will be my last post. Just wanted to respond to this.

I know what's reasonable is decided by experts and not by the parents. My point is that reasonableness as a concept is subjective in nature and is generally decided using precedent and current accepted thresholds. Change the precedent, thresholds or rules and reasonableness changes. Lots of children are receiving a sub optimal education and many have some element of SEN even if it's subthreshold that will massively impact their learning. Is every child that's in the bottom set of maths simply bad at maths or do they have a broader math learning difficulty which is apparently present in 25% of us. If you have this then you can't access maths education in the same way that other people can but it's literally a quarter of the population.

There are also always children wither side of the thresholds with any system of this nature. Your son will be one side of the threshold and receive DLA, another child with ostensibly the same condition to a comparable severity will miss out as they fall the other side of the threshold. It's bonkers!

I think I fundamentally agree with you though. We need to move away from a binary system where you are either SEN enough to get support or not and move more towards cheaper interventions earlier. We also need to redefine what's 'normal' and setup schools with this in mind. Most kids will have some challenges and perhaps we need to accept that we can't even everything out for everyone. As a parent our instinct is often to put our child first and fight for provision to counter any disadvantages but maybe we as a society need to accept that we simply can't afford to do this for everyone. Some kids won't be able to access somethings equally. This is already defacto happening but at least if we properly acknowledged it then we could look at would could sensibly be done to help these children.

I fear the white paper is can kicking.

Almost certainly, because they know it's going to piss everyone off.

An easy win to me would be to cut large chunks out of the curriculum and stop the constant testing, which will enable teachers to stop racing through it, to allow children to consolidate and enjoy the content. It would give some wriggle room during the school day to allow the class teachers to be flexible rather than just having to cover the content at breakneck speed, which switches off even the most academic. I doubt this will ever happen though, as no government wants to be the ones who have 'lowered' standards.

SEN support (K) is meaningless as it comes with no ring fenced funding and the only criteria to go on the SEN register is that they need something 'additional to or different from' the rest of the class. What if they need it, but there's no money to provide it, so they can't have it? What if 25% of the class need something different, 40%? 60%? When does it stop being additional or different if most pupils need something additional or different?

When it's just one teacher and 30 children, they can only provide so much before they themselves break-it's like the boiled frog analogy . They can organise movement breaks for everyone, additional bits for the pupils with ASD, something for those with ADHD, but there comes a tipping point where you can't sustain that when you have 5/10/15 with SEND, they can't do it-they can't prove a a bespoke curriculum for multiple children on their own-they are just one person.

This needs smaller class sizes, staff that want to stay, a more flexible curriculum where most children are motivated and can achieve and a fuck tonne more money.

This white paper is likely to bring with it ambiguity, no extra money and years of frustration and failure for everyone.

Yes, LAs delay for years to save money which often leads to x10 the cost later on and has a huge impact on social care and CAMHS as many end up traumatised. So a child who would've cost relatively little early to support on ends up on expensive EOTAS packages or indie placements or extremely expensive residential provision.

Back in the late 70s/early 80s you got speech therapy for a mild lisp. Another problem has been that there have been too few SaLTs etc trained over the last few decades. So many special schools closed due to 'inclusion'.

Primary school used to be much more fun and creative - lots of free play. Creativity was promoted. Much less pressure at secondary too.

Apparently early stress testing of EHCPs showed that this system was going to be a financial disaster but it was ignored and implemented anyway and of course broke down very quickly. Gaslighting is rife as it's a highly adversarial system. LAs view parents who exercise their children's rights as greedy parents with resources. That their kids don't really need EHCPs and as they get expensive packages they take the money away from children who really do need it. For parents it's brutal.

There is a lot of case law surrounding SEP in F, including about what is reasonably required in the legal sense. ‘Reasonably required’ for SEP in F isn’t a matter of what the general public think is reasonable. It is a matter of law. Despite what LAs like to claim it isn’t about resources, staffing or funding of LAs or schools. Ultimately, the courts decide.

And if the SEP is already in F, it has been deemed to be reasonably required legally, so can be enforced, including via JR if necessary.

If other DC have SEN that cannot or will not be met within OAP, their parents should request an EHCNA. That isn’t the fault of those parents whose Dc have EHCPs.

My point is the law can be changed. Case law simply clarifies and interprets statute. If the statute changes then this is what matters and what ultimately the government will need to do it it wants to reform this area and reflect public opinion and economic necessity.

My point wasn’t that the law can’t be changed. My point was parents don’t just get provision because they want it, ask for it or because the provision is the best in response to your comment saying “that many parents want”. It isn’t a ‘want’.

I never implied that's why they get provision. I was more implying that the parents won't want the law to change to the detriment of their child even if it's obvious it's necessary.

It was you who posted “that many parents want”. It isn’t about ‘wants’. It is about needs.

It's good to discuss this from both sides as things clearly are broken and can't carry on as they are.

Things was bad ten years ago. But this system today is totally broken.

It's good to talk and discuss as the "leak" was designed to demonise us SEN parents as entitled and demanding. When what most of us really want is just access to good enough education. Also the model of everyone as equals in the local mainstream is very simplistic and doomed to fail. How can mainstream teachers be expected to teach those with severe language disorders in a class of 30. Who wins there? The teacher? The other 29 kids? Or just the tax payer?

We need lots of experts and parents suggesting the changes not Surrey SEN managers who have the largest number of complaints to the LGO upheld about their SEND department. They are getting it spectacularly wrong. Yet those mangers are leading on this.

The articles concern me as like anything - the picture is extremely complex and this isn’t considered - Sure Start Centre closures have impacted massively on early years recognition and access to services. Lower per pupil
spending (and a lot of extra costs for schools on increasingly tight budgets) the LAs delaying assistance so that they can ‘save’ money for that year, NHS SLT and other services struggling for staff and not seeing those with ‘mild needs’, it’s all a mishmash of money and resource deprivation over many years. Added to Covid and the increasing disruption in schools it’s an epic issue that won’t work being looked at in isolation! It’s health services, education and local authority that need review in this area - one on its own is pointless!

The language of articles is also troubling- examples being given of high spending that will not be the norm to label the send kids and their parents as the problem! Whereas it’s a far broader system problem that has been brewing for years with services being cut and early key interventions going that would have made a difference for so many children who are now having to fight to get what they need.

It's scary that they listen to LAs who blame parents to cover up failings which tbh aren't always just due to a lack of money but chaotic management. I'm sure that parents and experts will have made many helpful suggestions to reduce costs but that'll just be lip service. It just feels like they are knee jerking with this out of desperation.

and who gets to decide which kids get what ? Kids with severe disabilities are not less and deserved to be treated as equally as any NT child.

Can you please quote the full sentence you are referring to?

This is how I feel. I do think there are many ways to save money and that there is a whole industry making ££££££ off the back of it; private therapists, solicitors/ barristers, inde schools, ed psychs advocates, taxi firms all profiting from kids essentially being denied their legal rights.

The more i've thought about the wording in the press the more i think they're going to limit what can be classed as provision. The talk of horse riding, falconry and sports must be more about eotas where those type of activities are more likely to be in f as most school's won't provide them. Could they possibly give a list of universal subjects that parents/ schools have to choose from? Or could it be about removing personal budgets and forcing in house LA provision, i seem to remember a while ago there was an idea floated about where parents could only choose a sen school from a pre determined LA ok'd list?

So many comments, like this on, focus on long-term, slow societal changes and causes - things that were different in the 70s and 80s - and I'm not in anyway denying the role these have played. But there has been such a rapid, recent growth that I don't think this can explain. There were 638,745 EHCPs in place in January 2025, up 10.8% on the same point last year - in one year! The number of new plans which started during 2024 also grew by 15.8% on the previous year, to 97,747. Like the rise in disability benefits, I'm neither denying that the need is real, or that there are long-term causes, but I'm not sure anyone has adequately explained or understood the sudden recent growth - but it does seem really financially unsustainable.

But what's the alternative to someone deciding who gets what? A limitless system available upon request?

If they were treated equally to other children then they would receive the standard £8k of funding and noadditional provision. I presume this isn't in fact what you're advocating for. Who says that the standard allocation is enough for most or even any child? Who determines one child's needs are more important than another's if there is limited resource? Whichever way you look at it, someone somewhere has to make these calls.

Also i'm grateful @Bargepole45 is engaging with this thread, i wanted the views of other parents who don't have kids with sen. These changes will likely impact them too and they should be able to have an opinion and voice it.

I know i frequent senjungle and various other send specific pages and while they are great, they don't cover everyone's views. I love my ds more than life and obviously want him to have his needs met but i'm also realistic that the send system as it is will have to change. Knowing what other views people hold is helpful.