Recently announced plans by the Department for Education to scale back spending to support children with special educational needs will put further pressure on provision that is already insufficient. Tammy Campbell explains how the current system is failing children – particularly those in more deprived areas.

Reforms to the systems that are supposed to serve children with disabilities and/or special educational needs (SEND) have been a long time coming. The Department for Education finally published its “SEND and alternative provision improvement plan” in 2023. It is not yet known what the impact of this plan will be.

Threaded throughout the Department’s guidance is a common theme, however: that spending on SEND should be curtailed. Local authorities must implement “reform to their high needs systems and associated spending,” and manage systems “in a sustainable way.” They must become “cost-effective,” and “appropriately manage [ie, reduce] demand for EHCPs [Education, Health and Care Plans].”

A lack of support

In research published this month, I present evidence suggesting a deficit of provision for children in deprived local areas. This points not to a need for cost-cutting, but for increased funding.

I find that, among primary children, there are lower chances of receiving statutory EHCP support, and also of diagnoses with certain conditions, in areas that are more deprived. Children with any SEND recorded in the National Pupil Database (NPD) census living in the poorest areas have about a 17.5 per cent chance of having an EHCP, compared to 22 per cent in the most affluent areas.

Among primary children, there are lower chances of receiving statutory EHCP support, and also of diagnoses with certain conditions, in areas that are more deprived.

“Specific learning difficulties” (SPLD) is a categorisation of SEND in the NPD that includes dyslexia, dyspraxia, and ADHD. Recognition of these conditions requires resources and professionals outside of schools. I find that around 15 per cent of children with SEND living in the most affluent decile are recorded with SPLD, compared to about 6 per cent in the most deprived.

Overall, my findings support contentions during the Education Select Committee that a “a massive rationing process” is taking place, with children in poorer areas losing out on specialist provision.

A perfect storm in a dysfunctional system

In additional research on (lack of) support for SEND, I wrote about how the primary school system is in many ways inherently exclusionary. This is in part because much of it is geared towards categorising children according to rigid, prescriptive “expectations” and “standards”: from denoting them as “good” (or not) at the foundation stage, through to assigning them as “performing” as “expected” – or not – at key stage two.

Accompanied by an accountability system that incentivises schools to maximise the number of pupils “meeting” these “standards,” individual children, their needs, and unique development, are lost. Combining this current set-up with the proposed reduction in funding and tailored support for children through EHCPs and special schools could create a perfect storm.

Combining this current set-up with the proposed reduction in funding and tailored support for children through EHCPs and special schools could create a perfect storm.

It may put schools in an impossible situation, worsening the essential incoherence of a system that simultaneously demands increasing adherence to a centrally prescribed and inflexible curriculum and assessment regime, while reducing support and provisions for children with disabilities and/or special educational needs. Will this allow the scope and flexibility to properly educate and care for these pupils?

The wider context is also important: years of austerity, a teacher recruitment and retention crisis, a post-Covid rise in the numbers of children requiring extra support, and plummeting mental health among children and young people. Does this sound like a situation from which resources should be removed?

Removing support is likely to hit families and children in deprived areas particularly hard, as my new research highlights. They are already missing out in terms of allocation of support for SEND. Instead, the underserving of children in these areas should be rectified. Ideally, at the same time, the purpose and function of our primary schools should be reimagined.

What do we want from our education system?

Do we want primary education to act as a sorting machine, selecting some children as “expected,” and “good,” at six different points – and discarding the rest? Do we want it to remain under-resourced, and unable to teach all of our youngest citizens – not caring that those disadvantaged by other life circumstances lose out?

Or do we want it to be able to educate and nurture our children, with flexibility to respond according to their individual needs, and to support their development? If this is what we want, we need central government to realign their values: to implement policies and practices that will ensure inclusive, generous education, for all.

This post draws on the findings of the author’s CASE research paper: “Inequalities in provision for primary children with special educational needs and / or disabilities (SEND) by local area deprivation”

All articles posted on this blog give the views of the author(s), and not the position of LSE British Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Image credit: Ryan Wallace via unsplash.