Does Bridget Phillipson think that every child has learning difficulties? The government’s long-overdue overhaul of provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) has now been unveiled, revealing a deeply troubling vision of schools.
Today’s big announcement about SEND reform reveals Labour’s impoverished vision for schools
Announced this morning is an additional £4 billion of funding, spread over three years, to support SEND pupils in mainstream schools. Matt Wrack, general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, was quick off the blocks in condemning this amount as ‘barely a drop in the bucket of the investment necessary to drive real improvement in schools.’ Indeed, sums of around £20,000-£40,000 a year for primary schools and £50,000-£70,000 for secondary schools are hardly likely to be transformative.
But forget the headline figures. Keeping costs under control is one of the key factors motivating reform. In recent years, the number of pupils in receipt of legally-binding education, health and care plans (EHCPs), which are key to unlocking significant extra support, has increased precipitously. Over 1.7 million pupils in England are now identified as having SEND, almost one in five of all school-age children.
One reason for the increase is the expansion of the definition of ‘special educational need’. Autism, for example, was once recognised as a condition that made it impossible for some children to endure the sensory chaos of a mainstream school; they might struggle to communicate, learn, or behave appropriately. But that was before ‘neurodiversity’ and the idea that we are all a little bit ‘on the spectrum’. Now, autism is defined so broadly that the label can apparently be embraced by anyone who is a bit clumsy or socially awkward.
Go back 20-years and anxious parents insisted their illiterate offspring had dyslexia and needed glasses with special coloured lenses in order to read. Today, dyslexia has to fight to be recognised alongside other conditions such as dyspraxia and dyscalculia, as well as more loosely defined conditions. There has been an almost 200 per cent increase in the number of children with an EHCP for ‘communication needs’ since 2015. Then there’s the ubiquitous Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and its angry cousin, Oppositional Defiance Disorder. Alongside this come mental health concerns such as anxiety and depression. And that’s before we get to Tourette’s syndrome, gender dysphoria, eating disorders or self-harm.
As diagnoses have run rampant, we have, it seems, forgotten that some kids are just shy, annoying, or a bit slower to learn than others. In the process, the whole notion of SEND has been rendered not just meaningless but eye-wateringly expensive. Funding for ADHD claims rose from £700,000 a year in 2013 to £292 million in 2025. The County Councils Network projects that the cost of transporting SEND pupils to school will reach £3.6 billion a year by 2030.
Tragically, those most in need fall by the wayside. Serious physical and mental disabilities have always existed, and some pupils are genuinely struggling and desperately in need of support. But labelling everyone and splashing cash indiscriminately does nothing to help these children.
So the government’s plan announced today, to raise the qualifying threshold for EHCPs is to be welcomed. Numbers are expected to be cut by about 270,000, in a necessary – but no doubt controversial – step in reigning in an out-of-control system. If that was it, we could welcome a sensible policy-change and argue against the inevitable backlash.
But at the same time as cutting back on EHCPs, the government plans to introduce new ‘individual support plans’ (ISPs). ‘Millions’ of children are deemed likely to get ISPs and, with them, possible access to psychologists and therapists, as well as access to ‘inclusion bases’ within schools. Starmer and Phillipson have been keen to emphasise that the extra money is going to mainstream schools to fund a renewed emphasis on ‘inclusion’ – with support stretching from ‘birth to the workplace’.
Inclusion is a lovely word. No one wants to see children excluded, especially not from school. But some pupils with very severe physical and learning disabilities are not best served by being placed in mainstream schools, however much we might wish they were. And the more teachers have to take into account every child’s individual support plan, liaise with therapists and psychologists, manage the inclusion base, and keep lists of everyone’s most recent diagnosis up to date, the less time there is for actual teaching.
This, surely, is the problem. All the emphasis on inclusion and special educational needs means that, in some schools, discipline is a dirty word, and no one insists that pupils sit still and shut up. It is difficult for children to learn in such an environment, but they do not have dyslexia; they just haven’t been well taught. Labelling everyone as having a special educational need means neither teacher nor pupil is responsible for educational failure. Inclusion for all can mean success for no one.
Today’s big announcement about SEND reform reveals Labour’s impoverished vision for schools: not high standards and excellence, but SEND provision for virtually everyone.
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