Promising an “inclusive education system that delivers high standards for all”, the government says more children are being educated in specialist settings than at any time in the past half-century. But it notes that children with SEND in mainstream schools achieve half a grade higher in GCSE maths and English than comparable children in special schools.
It is pledging to earmark a £1.6 billion fund to ensure needs are identified early and met consistently, with a further £3.7 billion to make buildings accessible, create special school places and open tens of thousands of places in “inclusion bases” in mainstream settings.
Education Health and Care Plans will be retained for children with “the most complex needs”, underpinned by “new evidence-based Specialist Provision Packages that set out the kind of support children and young people will receive”. This will “end the postcode lottery,” the government says.
An updated code of practice will set out a requirement for all schools to ensure staff receive training in SEND and inclusion.
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Gesher School pupils (Photo: Jeremy Coleman)[Missing Credit]
Dr Haddock welcomed other proposals that could reduce “inappropriate placements in specialist provision, which is positive”.
But she noted that “demand for EHCPs is still projected to rise in the short term. For our college in particular, clarity about transitions from EHCPs to specialist provision packages will be crucial to avoid uncertainty for young people preparing for adulthood.”
Tamaryn Yartu, headteacher of Gesher, a Jewish school in the borough of Harrow for children with mild to moderate needs, was “encouraged by the renewed focus on inclusivity across all school settings and the pledge of funds and resources to deliver better outcomes for SEND students”.
However, she said, “we question its implementation, as the government now needs to focus on the details of these next steps. It is crucial to establish how expertise and resources for inclusive practices will be practically and sustainably integrated into schools.”
Parents and carers will be looking for greater clarity
Any period of change, she added, would be “a cause for concern for families, many of whom have fought tirelessly for their children to receive the right provision, and we hope there will be robust legal parameters to protect these rights.”
Emma Gray, director of children and family services at Norwood Ravenswood, cautiously welcomed the White Paper.
“Parents and carers will be looking for greater clarity on how these measures will transform their children’s lives, and help them to navigate the system,” she said.
“We have long argued that provision is underfunded and too dependent on diagnosis, so we support in principle the announcement of plans to invest an additional £1.6 billion on SEND support in mainstream schools. We eagerly anticipate further detail of how it will be allocated to ensure that the true cost of support is met where it is most needed across the country.”
While the charity shared the government’s commitment to ensuring greater inclusion in mainstream settings, she said it was “important to recognise that not all settings are appropriate for every child.
“Not all mainstream schools are equipped to meet the diverse needs of every neurodivergent child, and many are already under immense pressure with insufficient resources to meet the needs of their current cohort and empower each child to reach their potential.
“For many of the Jewish children and young people we support however, mainstream environments aren’t appropriate to meet their needs, and we welcome the broad commitment to increasing provision in special schools.”
But Norwood was concerned about “the impact of automatically reassessing a child’s needs when making the transition from primary to secondary school,” she said.
“Families already face significant barriers when it comes to assessing their child’s needs in real-time, with significant backlogs in EHCP processing preventing them from receiving the most appropriate support to meet their child’s true needs.”
If the new assessment framework led to a reduction in support for children, she warned, “we risk condemning future generations to unequal educational opportunities”.
