It is an indisputable fact that the existence of education, health and care plans (EHCPs) from 2014 - with the introduction of the Children and Families Act - has brought a monumental increase in the number of young people defined as having a special educational need or disability (SEND).
This is usually cited as the driver for high-needs budget deficits, and a reduction in EHCPs appears to be on ministers’ minds.
I’ve previously lamented successive governments seeking to address the symptoms of the current SEND crisis rather than understanding the root causes, and a preoccupation with EHCPs is another example of this dysfunction.
EHCPs and the SEND crisis
Firstly, let’s be clear: EHCPs hardly ever live up to the name. They are, in practice, a more bureaucratic version of the old educational statements of SEND and are almost always devoid of any input from health or social care.
So we have the pretence of a multi-agency assessment and plan that primarily falls to two agencies: local authorities (as the responsible bodies for assessing need and issuing plans) and schools (typically for everything else). That reality is important when considering how we can do things differently, which I’ll come back to.
I’m reasonably sure that we didn’t see a major change in our demographics as a society in the early 2010s that would explain - medically - why we have seen such a significant rise in children being defined as having SEND.
So it stands to reason (I’m abridging what could be a thesis into 800 words, so forgive the jumps) that the driver must be more about the systems and structures that children and families interface with. That’s not to say there hasn’t been an increase in complex needs, but I think it’s safe to say that does not stand alone as a single explanation.
No long-term thinking
Given this, it’s hard not to ask the question: how could the government in 2014, during an austerity drive in which councils faced budget cuts of 40 per cent, create a system that required them to administer a multi-agency assessment process while also giving primacy to parental preference and actively enabling legal challenge (and my goodness, when did we normalise that?), without considering the resource implications?
At the same time, child and adolescent mental health services appear to be one of the most neglected areas of NHS performance (three-year waiting lists? No problem!), and health has been through at least two massive structural changes in that time. Thank heavens social care has been so well planned and resourced…
The challenge is, since 2014 EHCPs have been seen as the most effective means of securing extra funding for pupils with additional needs, and for those needs to be clearly defined in a legally enforceable contract between a family, school and local authority.
So how can we define our pupil population more appropriately, and return to a lower number of EHCPs, without reducing parental and pupil voice, and without starving schools of yet more funding?
Inescapably, it would need a change to the Children and Families Act and for the Equality Act to play a more prominent role in how we meet pupil need. Yet in my time in education, there appears to have been an inexplicable absence of the Equality Act when it comes to children.
A new model
What if, instead, we instituted a right for parents to request a reasonable adjustment plan between them and the school?
Much like it does for an employee, the Equality Act duty would (as it already does) sit with the school to put this in place, and advice may be sought from educational psychologists or universal health services.
If a school and a family couldn’t agree, a responsible admissions authority or the local authority could act as arbiter, and recourse could be made available to the local government ombudsman or the schools’ adjudicator.
This would require investment, but would cost far less than tribunals. Schools would also need a legitimate role in any appeals process, as right now they have no agency and very little voice.
It could provide a clearer, less confrontational and more measured approach for a huge cohort of pupils who don’t conform with what is defined as “expected” by schools, and who therefore - in the current system - need an EHCP because it’s the only other means to be accepted as needing a modified approach.
A system fit for purpose
We can’t solve the current SEND crisis without councils having the capacity to discharge their legal duties and without health playing a more active role (especially on funding), but we know there will be little change on local government getting that resource any time soon.
We therefore stand a far better chance of solving some of these issues if we can start to better manage demand, without reducing family agency and causing more families to lose faith in the system.
This feels especially relevant considering that we saw an increase of 92,000 children being electively home educated in 2024. We cannot allow future reforms to lead to a rise in this area.
Warren Carratt is the CEO of Nexus Multi-Academy Trust
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