Officials are considering a shake up of the education, health and care plan system that would likely lead to a narrowing or new structure of support as part of major SEND reforms, a government adviser has said.
Speaking to Schools Week at the Schools and Academies Show in London on Thursday, Dame Christine Lenehan added discussions were ongoing about whether EHCPs should only apply to special school pupils.
EHCPs stipulate the support schools are legally required to provide. But the number of plans has ballooned in recent years from 294,758 in 2019-20, to 434,354 in 2023-24.
Schools and other services have struggled to keep up with the demand.
Meanwhile, a Schools Week investigation in March exposed the poor quality of many plans, with inadequate funding short-changing schools and absent health and social care providers pushing more responsibility onto the education sector.
The government is drawing up reforms to the wider SEND sector, with speculation the whole system of EHCPs could be scrapped.
EHCP system ‘not fit for purpose’
Asked if families should be worried that EHCPs might not survive in their current form, Lenehan – the government’s “strategic adviser” on SEND – said: “It depends what they’re going to worry about, really.
“Do I think the structure around EHCPs will change? Yes, I think it probably will, because it’s not fit for purpose. Do I think we will still be able to recognise and support children’s needs in any other structure? Yes.”
She added that “most education, health and care plans these days are actually about getting children the education they deserve.
“It’s not necessarily about needing the additional factors that health and social care bring which is what they were designed for in the first place.”
Does she envisage there being fewer EHCPs, more narrowed?
“I think probably so. I think because that will take us back to original purpose.”
‘What is the purpose?’
Asked whether this would involve narrowing EHCPs to only apply to children in special schools and whether they had any place in mainstream, Lenehan said: “I think, to be honest, that’s the conversation we’re in the middle of.
“What is it? Where are the layers? What does it look like? Who are the children that actually need this? And also a broader thing that says, you know, you end up with something that’s huge.
“It’s what is the purpose of EHCPs? Are they delivering what they need to? And is the relationship in schools and local authorities in terms of putting the EHCP together and then delivering what the outcomes are, the right relationship with the right amount of stuff in.”
Lenehan, the former chief executive of the Council for Disabled Children, also chairs three local authority SEND improvement boards. This enables her to see it “through a local authority lens”, she said.
“I see the huge amount of money we put on statutory assessment to get the EHCPs right, and then I look at the translation into school, and it’s not working.”
‘We need to be bold and brave’
Speculation about changes to EHCPs has inevitably led to severe concerns among families their children will lose provision. Are they right to worry?
“No,” said Lenehan.
“Any system that the government looks at will have a full consultation process, will go through quite a long way of getting there, and we’ll have a long lead in time in terms of implementation.
“And that will mean that within that process, you’re actually protecting children’s rights and entitlements.”
Schools Week also understands any transition from EHCPs to a new support structure would be gradually introduced so any support wasn’t ended immediately.
And mainstream schools would likely be expected to improve the reasonable adjustments they offer under such a system, one source said.
As of 2023-24, almost 240,000 pupils with EHCPs were educated in state-funded primary and secondary schools. Around 155,000 were in state special schools.
Lenehan added that the “challenge is how bold and brave you want to be. And I think ministers have to work that through.
“There are so many people involved in this, and we’re not going to make everyone happy. So we need to be bold and brave. But it’s how bold and brave we are.”
‘Families terrified’
But Anna Bird, chair of the Disabled Children’s Partnership, a coalition of 120 charities, said “the idea of scrapping plans will terrify families”.
“The reality parents and children face now is that an EHCP is the only way they can get an education. Most requests for EHCPs come from schools who rely on them to support children’s health and social care needs.
“Any conversation about replacing these plans should focus on how children’s rights to an education will be strengthened, without the red tape and without the fight.”
The worst thing about EHCPs is that if a college cannot meet the needs of a learner, the council rewrites the EHCP to remove the bits we cannot meet. We then end up with a learner who is not suited to the course they have chosen, we cannot meet their needs and then the parents get upset when they inevitably fail or are put through the disciplinary process. The whole system is broken and needs to be looked at properly.
I am not sure what is worse … “seeing things through a local authority lens” or the delusion that there will be any protection of childrens rights and entitlements with removal of EHCPS. Even with an EHCP you often have to go to tribunal or resort to Judicial Review to secure provision.
This whole pantomime of a SEND Review has nothing but cost-cutting in mind. NOTHING child-centred about any of this or the proposed reforms to disability benefits.
The system is broken due to school budgets. Everything documented in an EHCP is necessary for that child to thrive. The problem lies in the fact that they cannot be implemented because schools do not have enough money to employ the necessary staff, let alone train them. There are so many children in mainstream education who are reliant on the support stated in their EHCP. Somehow they need to be able to get it whether it is through the EHCP system or another. Schools are already failing these children, through no fault of their own, and with more SEN children being signposted to mainstream, the problem is only going to get worse.
There has been a huge increase in children with very complex needs being placed in mainstream due to the being a shortage of special schools places.
Presumably the new system will prioritise an increase in special school places to accommodate the children with complex education, health and social care needs currently being failed by being placed in under resourced and over-subscribed mainstream settings?
Years and years of government and local authority complancy have caused these issues. The EHCPs give parents some legal right and control over their child’s health and education; take that away, and they cannot fight. Every governing body I have encountered within in the EHCP process, has been corrupt and incompetent beyond belief. Not just local authorities I’m afraid, the NHS neurodiversity teams as well. They want to run these services like a business, then pass the blame when the business goes bust. Rather than taking away from vulnerable children and families, how about the government, local councils, NHS teams and schools sort themselves out!
My first thought is how will a child get into a special school? You currently need an EHCP to get a place in a special school so how will this be determined? Seems the cart is being put before the horse. With current demand far outstripping placements, this will leave tens of thousands of vulnerable children in a mainstream school without any formal method (EHCP) of ensuring their needs are known. There is a huge increase in children transferring to secondary school and experiencing some form of EBSA, often through the sheer sensory overwhelm of such a busy environment. How can schools of 2000+ pupils make reasonable adjustments for children who are academically able but cannot manage in such a busy environment? There is a vast gap in provision for these children. Many have sensory needs alongside having high functioning autism. Smaller secondary environments without a dilution of the curriculum are needed, but this is costly if each needs a head / SENCO / SLT etc. With so much housing development going on, no new school should be approved without the MAT operating it including a unit provision. Groups of school can work cohesively to offer a range of specialisms – ASD, SEMH, PMLD etc.
This actually scares me not just as a mother of a SEND child and as a professional. Our children’s rights are already being disregarded and when EHCP are removed our ability to fight and advocate for them will also be removed. The failings of LAs and Government should be the focus not the removal of something that supports the rights of our children and gives parents and carers some chance of fighting to ensure their rights are met.
Many EHCP’s are supported at sen support level due to lack of funding. Many EHCP’s are so generic they aren’t worth the paper they are written on. It’s become an exercise to secure alternative provision. Completely broken system that doesn’t work for young people, parents, schools or local authority. I’ve left health and social care out, if you are a Senco you know why.
I agree with others. The rise in EHCPs is an indication of how schools can not support a child as more is expected from them for less money; the battle they and parents have to do to get the right support recognised, the relatively few places in special schools; the higher academic requirements focus expected. I know several teachers struggling to provide for the pupils in the classroom when the environment isn’t suitable for some pupils and they are managing high academic expectations, dysregulated children while under threat of suspension from trying to protect other pupils and themselves from dysregulated pupils. I wish the DofE would accept being quicker to agree to support pupils with these battles will help lead to calmer easier results all round.
The EHCP system is broken, the council ignore the evidence, force you to wait 8 months for tribunal, then still fail to do the needs assessment so then you have to pay £2k for a pre action protocol letter, and start a judicial review, just to get them to do their job. During this, the child is out of education and one parent is out of work as a full time unpaid carer. In the event, you get though it, they’ll allocate you a school an hour away which is impossible to access. Small village schools are getting inundated with SEN kids due to small class sizes, they have realised this and are rejecting kids outside of catchment because they are themselves overwhelmed.
I’m under no illusion change is needed, but all this proposal is doing is to remove a childs right to an education.
If they want to fix it, they need to create more SEN hubs in schools, and build more state funded special schools. But it’s the same issue as social housing, the councils have failed to spend wisely and kicked the can down the road, and the bill is now due and it’s bigger than ever.
This just shows how little this woman and the government know about the needs of SEN kids. My child has Down syndrome. Research shows children with this syndrome do better in main stream. He will need an EHCP regardless what school he is in, but it will cost the government significantly more to educate him in a SEN school, so this is a ridiculously short sighted and ignorant suggestion.
Looking at the issue through a local authority lens? Surely we should be looking at the issue from a SEND child’s perspective? The current system would work much better if local authorities stopped working against parents and stopped taking an aggressive, quasi-litigious approach to requests for EHCPs. The way local authorities deal with the EHCP process often means that only children of parents with the financial resources to challenge local authorities get the help they need. The local authorities then attack those parents suggesting they want special treatment for their children. It appears that these “reforms” are being driven by local authorities who have been shown not to have SEND children’s best interests at heart. The proposals are being drawn up in line with lobbying by the LGA and local authorities and other views are not being taken into account. This is appalling.