With a schools white paper expected within weeks, leaks to national newspapers offer only a piecemeal glimpse at what might happen with SEND reform.
Much of the national debate has focused on what will happen with education, health and care plans (EHCPs), which set out pupils’ legal rights to support.
But in the background, council and health officials have been quietly instructed to start the wheels in motion now for a reformed system…
‘We must begin this work now’
Ten days before Christmas, the Department for Education (DfE) and the NHS England wrote to council and health officials asking them to start work on a “local SEND reform plan”.
These plans will reflect five principles for the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) system already announced by education secretary Bridget Phillipson: early, local, fair, effective and shared.
But councils were warned not to wait for the white paper, or further information on dealing with historic funding deficits, to get started.
The letter, seen by Schools Week, came from Tim Coulson, director of the DfE’s regions group and Amanda Doyle, the NHS’s SEND lead.
It told officials to start assessing their current plans, to “ensure they are realising best outcomes and value for young people”.
“System-wide change will take time, and our children and young people only get one chance. We must therefore begin this essential work now and your leadership and partnership is critical to this.”
Coulson and Doyle warned it was “crucial” areas agreed “key actions that you will take now to prepare your system for change”.
It was also “crucial you are working with education providers” to ensure “your offer is high quality”.
It’s not clear whether schools nationwide have yet been alerted. But Coulson and Doyle said full “expectations of these plans” will be published alongside the white paper.
The letters revealed some detail, though. Areas will be asked for “more regular data submissions, focused on the key indicators of improvement”.
There is little further information on these indicators, but they will “form a vital foundation for implementing SEND reforms in a way that reflects the unique contexts of local areas and is underpinned by data and evidence”.
SEND and financial advisers will visit councils and share “priority metrics” recommended to “baseline performance”.
New tools to evaluate provision
In the meantime, the DfE and NHS have provided a “local partnership maturity assessment tool” for councils and health bodies to evaluate current provision.
One council official told Schools Week some authorities already had detailed self-evaluation processes, but that this push was about DfE trying to create consistency.
In its guidance for the tool, the government said: “We believe that having a consistent, shared framework with common language will support a national conversation in a complex system.”
The i newspaper recently reported that pupils will receive “tiers” of support depending on their needs.
The government’s tool sets out seven key “pillars” that will underpin reform. Local areas will be asked to rate themselves across four measures: not yet emerging, emerging, developing and maturing.
Labels offer glimpse at tiers plan
Pillar four focuses the most on schools. This looks at “high quality service delivery at universal, targeted and specialist” levels to promote inclusion.
It is these three labels – universal, targeted and specialist – that will form the “tiers” mentioned in national reports, a source told Schools Week.
The “targeted” tier will also include an option for schools to receive specialist external support.
Currently there are two categories of pupils with SEND: those receiving SEN support, and those with statutory education, health and care plans (EHCPs).
These were created in 2014, replacing three old categories: school action, school action plus and statements.
An insider said the “targeted” support could look like the old “school action plus”, an enhanced level of support where schools bring in specialist external help.
Stephen Kingdom, the DfE’s deputy director of SEND in 2014, said the last reforms mainly reflected problems with the “school action” tier. There had been concern it was “too easy for schools just to label a child as SEN as a kind of excuse for failure”.
“Possibly we did lose something because there was a clear expectation of support from external organisations.”
More EHCPs in mainstream schools
Under plans put forward to councils, practice deemed “maturing” under the pillar most closely related to schools includes seeing a “high percentage of EHCPs in mainstream”.
“Quality-first teaching” in mainstream schools, combined with “evidence-based SEN support and early engagement with parents, is helping to build knowledge and confidence in mainstream schools and SEN provision,” documents state.
This would lead to fewer EHCPs, they add.
In “maturing” practice, schools “use all available resources across education and health to build capacity and have embedded specialist support within their systems at a whole-school level”.
Margaret Mulholland, SEND and inclusion specialist at school leaders’ union ASCL, said the local SEND reform plans were “reasonable” and many members would “welcome further opportunities to work locally in this way”.
“However, we really need to see the full detail of the white paper to understand how realistic these new expectations are.
“If schools are to play a key role in delivering local provision, as has been suggested, then they clearly have to be resourced accordingly.”
The specialist capacity challenge
The new model will require having enough specialist staff.
The DfE and NHS have told councils to “build a shared understanding of local workforce capacity and development needs across partners”.
Edward Timpson, the Conservative children’s minister who led the 2014 overhaul, reflected previously how he “wished we had done more capacity building in the system before legislation”.
Several government-funded SEND intervention programmes have been piloted around schools, such as Early Language Support for Every Child (ELSEC) to address speech, language and communication needs through early intervention and “innovative workforce models”.
An evaluation last week found recruitment and retention of support workers “remain challenging”, despite “significant progress”.
ELSEC’s future beyond April is unclear, but Coulson and Doyle said they would “continue to support learning from partnership projects such as ELSEC”.
The toolkit suggests EHCPs wil survive, but it’s clear the system will eventually feature fewer.
A Teacher Tapp poll commissioned by the Social Market Foundation this week found 58 per cent of teachers wanted EHCPs reduced and money shifted elsewhere.
Standardised EHCPs here to stay
The Conservatives launched a “change programme” in 32 council areas to test its own SEND reforms several years ago.
A council official involved told Schools Week Tory reforms were “tinkering around the edges” of a broken system. But a pilot of a standardised EHCP template had worked well, they said.
It is understood these are likely to be continued.
The standardised template removed variation between councils’ EHCP documents and made it easier when children moved between council areas, the official said.
“It was probably one of only a few parts of the first phase where something beneficial came out. But it’s not going to correct problems with the system.”
An evaluation of the programme last week found these made the process “less overwhelming” for parents and “aided consistent decision-making”.
Another success showing “positive early impact” was the use of alternative provision specialist taskforces.
This involved basing teams of experts, like therapists and family support workers, in schools, working directly with youngsters.
In several areas they “have played a key role in supporting reintegration from AP back into mainstream settings and preventing escalation into exclusion”.
In 2024, the programme was re-nosed with more focus on inclusive mainstream practice. The programme will continue until the end of the academic year, and a final evaluation will follow.
As Schools Week revealed, councils were asked to test a new “local inclusion support offer” to “bridge the gap” between mainstream schools and the SEND system.
It’s not clear how this will marry up with the local SEND reform plan.
