A quarter of a million pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) in mainstream schools could lose their legal guarantees of extra support under a Government shake-up.
A key Department for Education (DfE) advisor is reported to have suggested that the department is considering restricting education, health and care plans (EHCPs) to children in special schools.
Such a move would cause an outcry among parents who value the plans as legal documents that ensure their children will receive a certain level of support in school to help with their special needs.
Latest DfE figures, show that in January 2024, there were 249,826 pupils with an EHCP in mainstream schools, compared to 185,964 in special schools.
When Dame Christine Lenehan, the Government’s strategic advisor on SEND, was asked today whether she thought there would be fewer EHCPs under the redesign currently being considered, she told Schools Week: “I think probably so. I think because that will take us back to original purpose.”
And then asked whether this narrowing of EHCPS would mean them only applying to children in special schools, she said: “I think, to be honest, that’s the conversation we’re in the middle of.”
“What is it? Where are the layers? What does it look like? Who are the children that actually need this?
“It’s what is the purpose of EHCPs? Are they delivering what they need to? And is the relationship in schools and local authorities in terms of putting the EHCP together and then delivering what the outcomes are, the right relationship with the right amount of stuff in.”
Speaking at the Schools and Academies Show in London, Lenehan said that the structure around EHCPs would “probably” change because it was “not fit for purpose”, but she insisted that any new system would “still be able to recognise and support children’s needs”.
square SPECIAL EDUCATIONAL NEEDS 'I have no support to care for my disabled son - the SEND system is broken'
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Hannah Rose, from parents’ organisation SEND Reform England, said: “The suggestion that EHCPs could be narrowed to only apply to special school placements is not only deeply alarming but dangerously out of touch with the lived experiences of families.
“For many disabled children, an EHCP is the only way to access the support they need to survive – not thrive, survive – in an education system that already excludes them at every turn. This move risks erasing the legal rights of thousands of children in mainstream settings, at a time when the system is already failing them.”
The Government wants to change the system because of an escalating SEND education crisis, caused partly by the increased number and cost of EHCPs.
At the moment, the plans, which can be hugely expensive, might guarantee extra help within a mainstream school, such as a dedicated teaching assistant. Or an EHCP could require a local authority to pay for a pupil to be educated at a private special school.
In March, The i Paper revealed that the Government was considering was tightening EHCP rules, in a move that could result in more children with SEND being educated in mainstream schools.
The number of EHCPs has surged in recent years – more doubling from 2018, when 285,722 pupils had a plan, to the 576,474 EHCPs in January 2023.
This increase is the main reason local authorities have accumulated a combined £3.3bn deficit in their “high needs” education budgets, according to a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) in December.
Last month, Mark Mon-Williams, professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Leeds, who is involved in the Government’s new expert advisory group on inclusion, refused to rule out scrapping EHCPs altogether in an interview with The i Paper.
Asked what role EHCPs will play in Labour’s SEND reform, he said that conversations are happening in “real time” with members of the community about the “best way forward”.
“That may mean keeping the existing system. It may mean changing the existing system. It may mean using other systems,” he said.
But campaigners fear reform could bring large-scale cuts to support for disabled children, especially after Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson warned parents in March that they would need to “think very differently” about what the system will look like.
Anna Bird Chair of the Disabled Children’s Partnership, a coalition of 120 charities, said: “The idea of scrapping Education Health and Care Plans [in mainstream schools] will terrify families.
“The reality parents and children face now is that an EHCP is the only way they can get an education. Most requests for EHCPs come from schools who rely on them to support children’s health and social care needs. Any conversation about replacing these plans should focus on how children’s rights to an education will be strengthened, without the red tape and without the fight.”
The Government has been contacted for comment.
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