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.
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.
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.