Send reform: will the government’s plans work for children, parents and teachers? Experts react

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Charlotte Haines Lyon, Associate Professor: Education, York St John University

The government has published its delayed proposals for education reform in England, which include significant changes to how the special educational needs and disabilities (Send) system operates. Our panel of education experts have been scrutinising the plans, which have been anxiously anticipated by many teachers and parents.

A fundamental shift in support

Paty Paliokosta, Associate Professor of Special and Inclusive Education, Kingston University

The government is proposing a gradual but fundamental shift in how the system uses education, health and care plans (EHCPs). EHCPs will remain, but far fewer children are expected to receive them. The first children with an existing EHCP to move to the new system would be pupils at the end of primary, secondary and post-16 in the academic year 2029-2030.

Instead, most support is intended to take place through a strengthened universal offer (support available to all children) and several layers of extra provision, only one of which will include an EHCP. The aim is to reduce the pressures that have made EHCPs the perceived, default route for help and promote a universally inclusive approach. This will succeed if the new layers are credible, consistent and properly resourced.

The introduction of nationally defined specialist provision packages marks a major change. These will determine the support available to children with the most complex needs and will form the basis of future EHCPs. Alongside this, individual support plans will outline day‑to‑day provision for all children receiving extra help, co‑produced with families.

In principle, this could create a more coherent system, based on inclusive values, which is very welcome. In practice, this needs to reflect on capacity. Schools cannot deliver more without the time, training and specialist expertise that have been in chronic short supply.

The proposal to reassess children’s entitlements to support at ages 11 and 16 is especially significant. These are critical transition points already associated with anxiety, academic pressure and identity changes.

Unless reassessment is handled with sensitivity – and backed by genuine specialist involvement – it risks introducing uncertainty precisely when stability is most needed. For many families, reassessment may feel like a potential removal of support, despite this not being the intention.

The open government consultation on the proposals is therefore crucial. It must test not only the design of these reforms but their real‑world viability. If the new layers of support do not arrive before EHCP access is tightened, families will simply experience another cycle of promises unsupported by provision. The system cannot afford another misfire.

Ending the postcode lottery

Jonathan Glazzard, Rosalind Hollis Professor of Education for Social Justice, University of Hull

The government hopes to end the postcode lottery of support and restore families’ confidence in the special educational needs and disabilities system. New national inclusion standards will set out the support that should be available in every mainstream setting. Statutory individual support plans will include key information about the child’s needs and the day-to-day provision in place to address these for all pupils with Send.

All staff will benefit from national Send training, supported by record investment of over £200 million. £1.6 billion will enable schools, colleges and early years settings to deliver an improved inclusion offer. In addition, £3.7 billion will be invested to make buildings more accessible, create more special school places and develop inclusion bases in mainstream schools.

£1.8 billion will be allocated to fund an “experts at hand” service to improve access to speech and language therapists, educational psychologists and occupational therapists in mainstream schools.

In total the government plans to invest £7 billion more on Send, and core funding for schools and Send is expected to increase annually.

There is much to consider but on the surface the investment and vision look promising. There is a clear commitment to inclusive mainstream education, a determination to improve outcomes for children with Send and a desire to “call time” on a broken Send system.

Mainstream inclusion lacks specialist support

Johny Daniel, Associate Professor, School of Education, Durham University

The government’s investment in mainstream inclusion is welcome and long overdue. Increased spending on Send support and on expertise beyond school, signal genuine intent to identify and meet pupils’ additional needs earlier and more consistently.

However, the specialist provision model outlined in the policy appears oriented primarily around health, sensory and complex cognitive needs. There is little attention to specific learning difficulties, one of the largest special educational needs categories. It is not clear that children with specific learning difficulties would meet the threshold for the specialist provision planned, and yet no specialist teaching workforce is proposed to support them.

The proposed reforms’ reliance on teaching assistants to support children with special educational needs is particularly concerning. The government’s policy document cites headteacher perceptions of teaching assistant effectiveness as justification. However, observational research consistently shows that teaching assistants lack the expertise to deliver structured interventions for pupils with additional needs.

What is missing is investment in specialist teachers embedded within mainstream schools, professionals trained to provide targeted support for academic learning and social-emotional needs. Without this, children with specific learning difficulties risk remaining underserved, even within a better-funded system.

Relationships between families and schools

Charlotte Haines Lyon, Associate Professor: Education, York St John University

The government openly acknowledges parental disengagement with the education system and its roots in a breakdown of trust. This comes from negative experiences of the education system, poverty and the failure of Send provision. This is a more honest starting point than much policy of the last decade and is genuinely welcome.

At surface level, there is much to appreciate in the rhetoric. The government explicitly states its ambition to move from “a broken social contract to families as partners”. However, on closer examination the proposals offer less partnership than the language used suggests.

What it actually sets out is a list of expectations about how parents should behave — around attendance, behaviour, communication and engagement with learning at home. While these expectations may seem reasonable, genuine partnership is built through dialogue and the slow rebuilding of trust, not through the imposition of standards.

This matters particularly because those most targeted by these expectations are precisely the families who have had greatest reason to distrust schools. These are white working-class families, those in persistent poverty and families whose children have been failed by the Send system.

The government has acknowledged this distrust but then responded to it with the threat of mandated engagement “where it is lacking”. This is not only contradictory, but risks deepening the very distrust it seeks to repair.

At first glance, the focus on the relationship between families and schools echoes the groundbreaking 1967 Plowden report, which introduced parents’ evenings and written reports as mechanisms of institutional accountability to families. But the comparison reveals a significant shift in direction.

Plowden directed its obligations toward schools and local authorities. These proposals reverse that dynamic. It is parents who are now expected to open up to schools, to be accountable to them, and ultimately to face compulsion if they do not comply. The direction of obligation has fundamentally changed.

Paty Paliokosta co-leads the National SENCO Advocacy Network and sits on the National Executive Committee of SEA.

Charlotte Haines Lyon, Johny Daniel, and Jonathan Glazzard do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Send reform: will the government’s plans work for children, parents and teachers? Experts react – https://theconversation.com/send-reform-will-the-governments-plans-work-for-children-parents-and-teachers-experts-react-276660