The long-trailed and much-leaked SEND white paper has been published.
The government is billing it as a “radical expansion of rights”. Yet on first reading, several proposals seem poised to dilute long-established, hard-won legal protections that families rely on every day.
Ministers themselves acknowledge that families have endured too much for too long. That is precisely why legal safeguards matter.
When systems fail, it is enforceable rights, and not aspirations, that allow children and young people to secure the support they need. Promises can be broken, rights can be upheld.
At the heart of our concern is a proposed shift away from individually tailored special educational provision, based on a child’s assessed needs, towards nationally defined resource led provision, in particular “specialist provision packages”.
This signals a fundamental move away from a legal framework centred on the child’s needs, to one centred on standardised bands or packages.
‘A real risk’
Such a shift risks fundamentally undermining the individualised rights structure embedded in the Children and Families Act 2014 – legislation expressly designed to ensure that support is determined by a child’s specific needs, not by what happens to fit within a pre-determined offer.
The proposed changes to education, health and care plans (EHCPs) raise further important questions.
The consultation signals a shift in both the threshold for a needs assessment and the scope of what such an assessment would cover.
The result is a real risk that many children who currently meet the legal test for an assessment could be excluded.
In addition, the white paper indicates that future EHCPs may be reserved for children and young people with “complex needs”, yet provides no definition of that term or clarity about how any threshold would operate in practice.
Providing a legal duty is not enough
Alongside this sits the proposal for schools to have a legal duty to provide “individual support plans” (ISPs) for children with SEND.
These plans, to be reviewed annually, would be created for all children and young people with SEND including those with EHCPs.
IPSEA has long campaigned for what is currently known as SEN support to be put on a statutory footing. We believe that if schools have a legal duty to provide provision to children and young people with SEND at the earliest point of intervention, it would relieve pressure on the EHCP and tribunal system.
However, simply providing a legal duty for a school to produce and monitor an ISP is not enough. A document alone is worthless if the provision itself is not legally enforceable and tailored to the individual needs of each child or young person.
This approach would also leave families challenging decisions made by schools, without recourse to an independent investigative body.
Proposals for placement rights also appear to be fundamentally altered.
The long-standing right to request that a school of certain types and the conditional duty to name the requested setting (legal rights that predate the 2014 reforms) seem set to be replaced by a far more limited right to choose from a list determined by the local authority.
Coupled with proposals to remove the tribunal’s power to name a specific setting, and the extension of reasons an LA could use to refuse a parent’s alternative placement preference, this represents a significant shift in the balance of decision-making power away from families.
Tribunals are a cornerstone of accountability
The ability to challenge placement decisions, and for an independent specialist Tribunal to determine whether the setting that a parent or LA proposes is appropriate and to order it to be named an appropriate school or college place, has long been a cornerstone of accountability in the SEND system.
Any narrowing of that power demands very careful scrutiny.
Of course, there are elements of the white paper we welcome. A clear commitment to early intervention, sharing good practice and strengthening expertise within mainstream schools reflects ambitions that many families share.
A restatement of schools’ duties under the Equality Act 2010 and a renewed focus on reasonable adjustments and disability discrimination is long overdue.
It is equally important to acknowledge that sustained engagement with the government over the past year appears to have had an impact.
The SEND tribunal has not been scrapped, and EHC plans have not been removed entirely. That matters. It demonstrates that dialogue can shape policy. Constructive challenge can secure meaningful change.
Questions unanswered
But significant questions remain unanswered.
How will the new framework operate for children and young people who cannot attend school and rely on education otherwise than at school (EOTAS) packages, or who are receiving alternative education from their LA?
How will the system work for those in training but outside school or FE. What about children and young people in youth custody? Reform must work for all, not only for those whose circumstances fit the mainstream model.
We stand ready to work constructively with ministers, parliamentarians, professionals and families throughout the consultation period.
But let me be clear: legal rights for children and young people with SEND are not optional extras.
Any weakening of those safeguards risks leaving parents without meaningful recourse when provision fails.
If government truly intends to expand rights and rebuild trust, then it must ensure that every proposal strengthens the legal foundations on which children and young people with SEND depend.
Your thoughts