Ministers’ SEND listening campaign ‘futile’, say parents

The government’s new public engagement campaign on SEND has been labelled a “futile tick-box exercise” by parents, as ministers seek to reassure the sector they are listening.

This week, the Department for Education (DfE) launched “the biggest national conversation on SEND in a generation”. It will host nine face-to-face and five online events “putting families at the heart” of its plans. 

But the “conversation” only runs until January 14 – and leaves little time ahead of the delayed white paper, expected to be published the same month. 

Rachel Filmer, campaigns manager at Special Needs Jungle, said the timescales left parents “sceptical” that it would have “any impact on the white paper”. 

An online form launched to gather views has about 30 questions, with no word count restriction, for people to give their thoughts on the system. 

The DfE said it would review “all responses carefully” and questions are optional. It may use artificial intelligence to identify “themes, trends and patterns”. 

The “conversation” asks for views on some proposals already put forward by experts and thinktanks, such as the Sutton Trust’s suggestion to introduce “SEND hubs” into schools. 

But Filmer said many parents already provided testimony to the recent education select committee SEND inquiry.

“Framing questions differently will not lead to different answers. Parents are exhausted, and have lost patience with a system that claims to be listening, while demonstrating that we have not been heard. There is an overwhelming sense that this is a futile tick-box exercise.”

The DfE is holding ticketed in-person events in each region, alongside the online events, but attending would mean travelling hundreds of miles for some. For example, the nearest meetings for schools in Cumbria would be in Darlington, Leeds or Manchester. 

Madeleine Cassidy, chief executive at the Independent Provider of Special Education Advice (IPSEA), said this “risks restricting participation for many families and narrowing the range of voices heard”. 

Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders union, also wondered “how feasible it will be to analyse responses that come in in the middle of January”.

The DfE said a public consultation “on some aspects of our SEND plans” would be launched alongside the white paper. 

Georgia Gould, the schools minister, told the first online event “we will work very hard to ensure that is a meaningful consultation and we hear from people around the country”.

“We’ve done a lot of engagement, the expert advisory group has done a lot of work, but we felt it was very important we were having a real dialogue,” she said. 

“The things that people are saying to me… that is helping shape proposals and we are taking that back directly into policy-making conversation.”

Gould said “getting accountability right is a key part of the areas we’re looking at”. 

It comes as a row about how SEND will be funded in the future rumbled on this week. 

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) defended its “reasonable” decision to forecast the impact of a funding shortfall on the schools budget following a backlash from ministers.

The government announced at the budget last month that in nearly two years, SEND cost pressures would sit on its books, rather than those of councils, estimated to cost £6.3 billion in 2028-29.

The OBR reported that funding this entirely from the schools budget would see mainstream per-pupil funding cut by 4.9 per cent. 

But the DfE said this was “fundamentally wrong” and did not “account for the detail” of its planned SEND reforms. 

Tom Josephs, a member of the OBR committee, said the government “just told us it would be absorbed within overall government spending, it didn’t tell us how it would fund it”.

He added: “We have to illustrate risks so we chose to do it, which I think is reasonable, by illustrating the impact that would have on the schools budget.”

Susan Acland-Hood, DfE permanent secretary, said this week it was “helpful” the OBR have recognised the funding pressures.

“Although it feels challenging to say it will go on the government’s balance sheet, what that does is it recognises that it’s a problem that we need to solve together between central and local government. We can’t just keep expecting local government to do this all on their own.”

Education secretary Bridget Phillipson also told the Commons this week that the future SEND funding shortfall was a “matter for the next spending review”, due to be held in 2027.