
A new report from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) issues an urgent call for the Government to take action to improve the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) system, which it says is ‘failing the families who need it and putting almost half of all councils in England in danger of bankruptcy within 15 months.’
It is one of a number of reports in recent months calling for the SEND system to be improved. The National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA) argued however that the PAC report misses a 'crucial part of the picture' as it does not include early years education.
The PAC finds that ‘too many’ families struggle to access SEN support. The report highlights a postcode lottery with big variation across the country in wait times for education, health and care (EHC) plans.
It argues that the Department for Education (DfE) does not ‘fully understand’ why demand for SEND support has increased, which undermines its ability to deliver it.
A further 1.14m children since 2015 receive SEN support in schools (a 14 per cent rise since 2015), while demand for EHC plans has soared by 140 per cent since 2015, says the PAC. It adds that the DfE must ‘improve its understanding of demand, before setting out how it will provide support more efficiently.’
With increasing demand for EHC plans, most local authorities have overspent their annual high-needs budget each year since 2016-17. The report says this has contributed to growing cumulative deficits for many local authorities within their dedicated schools grant budgets, with others using reserves to cover SEN costs. However, it says that this only hides the ‘deteriorating’ financial situation.
The PAC report goes on to make a number of recommendations:
- Over the next 12 months, the DfE should work with others including local authorities and the Ministry of Justice to better understand the reasons for differences in identifying and supporting SEN needs across local areas and schools, routinely identify and share good practice from better performing areas; and improve local authority decision-making by analysing tribunal decisions.
- Within the next six months, the DfE must work with the Department of Health and Social Care to better understand the reasons for increasing and changed demand for SEN support, and then set out how it will provide support more efficiently, such as through group support, identifying needs earlier and ensuring special schools reflect value for money.
- The DfE should, within the next six months, set out the provision which children with SEN support should expect. Alongside this, they should set out what inclusive education means and looks like, and the level of resourcing both to ensure the support for children with SEN and the maintenance of educational provision for other children in the same setting.
- Given the risks to local authorities' finances, central government must urgently involve local authorities in conversations to develop a fair and appropriate solution for when the statutory override ends in March 2026, clearly setting out these plans as a matter of urgency and no later than March 2025.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP, chair of the Committee, said, ‘Urgent warnings have long been issued to Government on the failing SEND system from every quarter. This is an emergency that has been allowed to run and run. Families in need of help have been forced to spend precious energy fighting for the support they are legally entitled to, and local authorities to bear an unsustainable financial burden.
‘The fact that 98 per cent of cases taken to tribunal find in favour of families is staggering, and can only demonstrate that we are forcing people to jump through bureaucratic hoops for no good reason. It is long past time the Government took action matching the gravity of this situation. And yet our inquiry found no sense of urgency amongst officials to do so.
‘The immensity of this situation cannot be overstated. As a nation, we are failing countless children. We have been doing so for years. At the same time, we are creating an existential financial risk for some local authorities, caused by that same failing system. This report must serve as a line in the sand for Government. Every day that goes by for families not receiving the right support is another day closer to a lost generation of young people.'
Alongside the report, the PAC Chair has also written to the Secretaries of State and Permanent Secretaries of the Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care, to underline the ‘gravity of the current position’.
The National Education Union (NEU) said the report highlights the ‘full drastic extent of the crisis in SEND, which schools, parents and unions have been telling the Government about for years’.
Similarly, the Liberal Democrats said the report ‘lays bare a wrecked system of SEND provision in this country that is failing children and families every single day’.