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SEN

Here you'll find advice from parents and teachers on special needs education.

Do you want to lose your right to appeal for a suitable school for your child with SEND?

3 replies

GenialHarrietGrouty · 17/05/2026 15:05

This is one of the proposals in the Government consultation on SEND. You will be able to appeal against the school named, but if the tribunal finds that it was unreasonable for the local authority to name whichever school it has named, the tribunal won't be able to order that your preferred school be named. Instead the LA will be ordered to go away and think again, and it is perfectly possible for it to name the same school. So you could be trapped in an unending spiral of appeals with nothing being resolved.

They are also proposing to take away the right to appeal against the refusal to send an EHCP after an annual review and indeed to take away all annual reviews other than for change to a new phase of education. So if, say, your child's school placement is about to break down and you feel they urgently need better support, where you would now ask for an emergency review, that won't be possible.

Perhaps most seriously, your child's day to day support will be defined only through an individual support plan drawn up by the school, with no right to appeal to an expert tribunal if you disagree with it. Instead, you can go through your school's complaints process where it will be dealt with by governors with no expertise in SEND plus a supposed SEND "expert" who may be something like a SENCO in another local school. That's if the school can recruit governors willing to spend all their time on such panels, of course.

Just a few of the worrying aspects of the White Paper. If you don't agree with this, please respond to the constellation - full details on the thread about this.

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Aurora114 · 17/05/2026 17:33

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GenialHarrietGrouty · 18/05/2026 00:05

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It won't be much use being able to compare schools if the reforms go through as planned, because your right to choose will be severely limited.

It's vital that as many people as possible respond to the consultation, otherwise the DfE will interpret silence as agreement to everything.

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