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Hundreds of thousands fewer children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send) will be given education, health and care plans (EHCPs) as a result of long-awaited changes announced by the education secretary on Monday.
Bridget Phillipson has outlined her plans to overhaul Send provision in England, under which only those children with particularly severe or complex needs will be given EHCPs.
Millions of children will be given new individual support plans (ISPs) to be agreed with schools which could include access to psychologists and therapists, as well as access to “inclusion bases” within schools.
ISPs will be a broader category than ECHPs, covering some children who are not currently in the Send system – but the right to appeal will start with schools instead of independent tribunals, leaving some concerned that parents will be less likely to succeed in any legal challenge.
The changes are designed to stem a rapid rise in the number of children being given EHCPs, which has caused a multibillion-pound hole in local authority finances.
Government modelling shows the number of EHCPs are forecast to rise from just over 5% of pupils today to nearly 8% in 2029-30. The number will then fall as the new system come in to under 5% by 2034-35 – a drop of 270,000 if pupil numbers remain stable.
Phillipson said the plans were designed to prevent parents having to battle highly indebted local authorities to secure help for their children. But the restrictions on EHCPs threaten to cause a backlash from parent groups and Labour MPs.
Phillipson said in a statement on Monday: “The Send system designed 10 years ago for a small number of children is now broken. Parents end up fighting tooth and nail for entitlements on paper that don’t see them getting additional support. Children’s educations and lives have suffered.
“Today’s plans will take children with Send from sidelined and excluded to seen, heard and included. Every child will get the brilliant support they deserve, when they need it, as routine and without a fight.”
Phillipson’s plans form the biggest changes to Send provision in over a decade. Since the current EHCP system was implemented by the coalition government in 2014, the number of children with the plans has jumped from 240,000 to 640,000. That rapid rise has opened up a gap in local authority finances, which the Office for Budget Responsibility estimates will hit £6bn in two years’ time.
“I’ve spent a lot of time speaking with parents, with young people and with those who support children to understand what needs to change,” Phillipson said in a speech after the white paper was unveiled. “What I’ve heard time and again is that increasingly, EHCPs have become the only way to get what your child needs … and we have to change that.”
She added: “These kinds of chances to deliver a better system for children, they don’t come along very often, and I’m determined that we make this a better system of support.”
Officials said Phillipson’s overhaul was not aimed at closing that funding gap in the short term, though the reduced number of children with EHCPs by 2035 should do so in over a longer period. Instead the government has committed an extra £4bn to the new system, which it will begin to spend immediately.
That extra funding could help bring down the Send deficit in the next few years, officials say. But the plan is likely to leave the Treasury still having to find billions of pounds more to bail out local authorities by 2028-29.
Under Phillipson’s changes, EHCPs – plans drawn up by local authorities that guarantee a legal right to certain levels of support – will be limited to those with the highest level of need such as lifelong learning disabilities, severe behavioural problems or physical disabilities.
If parents feel they have been unfairly denied an EHCP, they can appeal to a tribunal. But unlike under the current system, the tribunal will not be allowed to demand that local authorities send a child to a particular school, giving councils far more control over where Send children are educated.
Under the plans, children in year 2 and below who have EHCPs will be assessed under the new system when they move from primary school to secondary. The assessment could result in the plans being removed from thousands of children if they are not deemed to meet the new criteria.
The new ISPs will be administered by schools rather than local authorities, and parents who are unhappy with them will be asked to appeal to the school itself. If they still feel their child’s needs are not being met, they can appeal to a local authority or the Department for Education. But they will not be given recourse to a tribunal, as those fighting for EHCPs can.
The plans will be put out to consultation before the government brings forward legislation in the next session of parliament, which begins in May. The first assessments under the new system will be carried out in 2029.
Labour insiders believe the plans could cause a rebellion among backbench MPs, though Phillipson had been at pains to consult them before publishing her white paper.
