On Monday, the government released its major new white paper for schools, representing the biggest proposed shake-up to SEND policy in the last decade.
The white paper aims to fix a system characterised by an escalating demand for EHCPs as the primary mechanism to access fully resourced SEND support. Whilst there is excellent practice happening across our schools, access to significant funding remains, as the white paper observes, “locked behind bureaucratic statutory processes”. Too many children face delays getting all their needs met, overwhelmed parents often feel like they have no choice but to fight tooth and nail for an EHCP, and council deficits are on track to hit £6 billion.
With EHCP requests more than doubling over the last decade, the backlog has reached a point where one in 14 children are waiting over a year for extra help. Meanwhile, time from specialist professionals has been funnelled into activities such as EHCP applications, detracting from their capacity to help school staff with early intervention and support for children with additional needs.
The white paper sets out proposals to change this, focusing on building capacity to support more children in mainstream environments, before re-calibrating the SEND system as we know it.