This week the government announced proposals for extensive reforms to England’s special educational needs and disabilities system, after years of calls for change from school leaders and families alike.

These plans have met with a mixed reception in the sector, with many making the link between these supposedly “new” proposals and elements of a previous system that was in place before 2014, when the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government introduced the current set-up.

But what are the similarities between that old system and the current proposals? And is it a good idea to be drawing on the past or do we risk repeating old mistakes?

The SEND system that we currently have - which will more or less continue until 2029, to give the government time to pass the legislation required to introduce its new proposals - has been in place since 2014, when the Children and Families Act brought about major reform, including the introduction of education, health and care plans (EHCPs).

Before that, children with SEND were supported via a three-tier model, including school action, school action plus and SEN statements, which were introduced via the 2001 Special Educational Needs and Disability Act.

It is this system that shares elements with the new proposals.

Another three-tier SEND system

The most obvious similarity is having a three-tier system, says Margaret Mulholland, SEND and inclusion specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL).

“The reforms are suggesting that there will be an expectation of what every student gets - universal support,” she explains, adding that the government has then proposed three additional tiers of support: targeted, targeted plus and specialist.

“So you’ve got a very similar structure to what we had before” - with school action, school action plus and specialist, Mulholland says.

Seamus Murphy, CEO of Turner Schools, a trust that runs eight academies in Kent, also sees the new plans as harking back to the pre-2014 model. “Targeted support could include small group work, speech therapy or sensory help,” he says. “This is very similar to [the previous tier of] school action, as it is managed primarily within the school’s own resources.”

Experts at hand

Meanwhile, targeted plus will cover the use of external specialists through the proposed new “experts at hand” offer. Experts at hand will provide a bank of local professionals, including educational psychologists, occupational therapists and speech and language therapists, for schools to draw from.

“This aligns with [the old tier] school action plus, where the school brought in outside professional expertise,” Murphy points out.

Anne Heavey, director of insights at Ambition Institute and a member of the government’s SEND inclusion in education expert group, tells Tes that the intention of the move back to this three-level system is to “bring the specialist [tier] back over the statutory line, because at the moment you have to take the pupil over the statutory line” - hence the oft-cited “fight” many parents face to get their child an EHCP under the current system.

The aim is for children to have “the right support in place much, much quicker”, Heavey says.

‘More red tape’

Murphy agrees that the present system brings a lot of “red tape that schools have to grapple with. This is hugely burdensome to schools, but, more importantly, it delays any support for children”, he says.

But, rather than easing this burden, he fears that a new three-tier system will, in fact, be “a retrograde step” that both “labels and limits children”.

While the targeted and targeted-plus levels bring clear comparisons with pre-2014, “what is new is that both of these new categories require additional admin, professional meetings and annual reviews with parents, as well as capturing the views of the child”, he says.

“This will mean that schools have to prioritise following the processes set out,” he adds, envisioning that there “will be more red tape” - and further work for already-stretched school staff.

Individual support plans

Another similarity is that, as part of the proposed new system, mainstream schools will be expected to produce individual support plans (ISPs) for students with SEND. These bear resemblance to individual education plans (IEPs), which were in place before 2014.

Sue Franklin, chair of the National Association of Principal Educational Psychologists and also a member of the SEND inclusion expert group, tells Tes that IEPs “could be good, but they were also problematic because they could be very static. A child could have the same target for ages and ages”.

By comparison, as schools minister Georgia Gould has outlined, ISPs will be delivered through a national digital system. Franklin says “this digitisation and the plan to make them more dynamic, evidence-based and accountability-reviewed” is key, allowing the plans to be kept as up-to-date as possible.

So, while there are similarities, this isn’t simply a matter of history repeating itself: there are differences between the pre-2014 system and the new proposals.

Some of these are subtle changes, such as the government’s choice to use the word “layers” rather than “tiers” when describing the levels of support, says Mulholland. This reflects the intention for schools “to reach for that intervention quickly when you can see it’s needed in your classroom”, she explains - because the language of “layers” suggests an easier flow between stages, rather than the more discrete “tiers”.

Elsewhere, the changes are more significant, not least the fact that before 2014, SEN statements only applied until the age of 18, notes Franklin. The 2014 reforms extended that to age 25 “to give children with more complex needs more time in the education system to be prepared for adulthood”, she says. This continues with the new proposals.

Meanwhile, exactly how the funding for the new system will work in practice remains to be seen.

A new SEND context

Wider changes will also play a role in how the enactment of these proposals will be different to what’s come before.

For example, Heavey says that if new technology can be harnessed to better share ISPs “between providers when a child moves school or into further education or sixth form or university, that would be a really good thing”.

Meanwhile, Franklin sees these reforms as “bringing good things from the past, putting them into the future and adding new knowledge, new understanding, more evidence-informed practice”.

And most importantly, says Mulholland, the major difference between pre-2014 and now is the cultural context.

“We’ve moved on a lot in terms of what we understand about the challenges of the system. What we’re talking about now is whole-school approaches, not school action or action plus led only by a Sendco and a few TAs. That’s what’s shifted, and that’s where the expectations are different.”

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