Russell Haggar
Site Owner
Special Educational Needs and Disabilities
Conservative Governments between 2015 and 2024 did recognise the problems associated with the provision assistance for children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities. They did increase SEND spending significantly but despite this increase in central government funding, Local Authorities were forced to increase their debts significantly to meet the increasing demand for SEND facilities. Yet it has been argued that considerable demand for SEND facilities remains unmet.
The Conservatives also extended the deadline to enable Local Authorities to postpone the repayment of the debts which they had incurred and introduced some plans to help the Local Authorities to reduce their debts. However, it was clear that if the Conservatives had won the General Election of 2024, they would have needed to take further measures to address problems of SEND provision. In the event, however, it would fall to the incoming Labour Government to address these problems
Click here for an introductory article explaining SEND, EHCPs, problems with the system and preliminary discussion of Labour’s plans for reform.
Click here and here and here for problems with SEND
There have recently been several very detailed [ and critical] reports into the provision of resources supporting children and young adults with special educational needs and disabilities {SEND].
Click here for House of Commons Library Research Briefing: Special Educational Needs support in England [December 17th, 2025]
Click here for National Audit Office Report {October 2024] O Report and click here for a summary of the Report
Click here for Select Committee on Education Report: Solving the SEND Crisis [September 2025] There is a 5-page summary of the Report.
Click here for IFS Spending on special educational needs in England Something has to change [December 2024] [1]
Click here for IFS Annual Report on School Spending England 2024/25 [January 2025] [2]
Click here for IFS Schools and Colleges in the 2025 Spending Review [May 2025] [3]
The above Reports contain complex data details but, in the following notes, I focus only on some very basic data on the provision of SEND support.
The IFS [2] indicate that in 2024/25 Total Education Spending was £116 Billion at today’s prices or about 4.1% of National Income.
The IFS [3] distinguish between day-to-day spending and capital spending and note that spending on special needs provision has increased significantly in recent years. The BBC notes that based on an IFS Report”
The government is already spending £12bn this year on supporting those with Send, a figure that has risen by 66% in the last decade.
Under current projections, there will also be an extra 220,000 children and young people with education, health and care plans (EHCPs) by 2029, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) says.
However, the increase in DfE spending on Special needs has not kept pace with the increasing numbers of children and young adults claim SEND help and this has obliged local authorities to finance additional SEND assistance via increased borrowing which is unsustainable in the long term. Click here for a Guardian article on Labour’s approach to this problem.
Click here and here and here and here for further discussion from the BBC.
The number of children and young adults in England receiving assistance as a result of their special needs and disabilities [SEND] has risen significantly such that as reported in the House of Commons Library Research Briefing of December 2025
“In January 2025, there were over 1.7 million school pupils in England with identified SEN (19.6% of all pupils). Of these pupils with identified SEN, around 1.3 million receive SEN Support, and around 0.5 million have Education, Health, and Care plans.”
Click here for further information from the DfE on Special Educational Needs in England
Click here for Attainment levels of pupils eligible and ineligible for SEND provision Key Stage 4 2024/25
It is notable also that pupils eligible for free schools meals are more likely than pupils ineligible for free school meals to have special educational needs which clearly puts the former pupils at a double disadvantage. This id discussed in this recent report from the Sutton Trust entitled Double Disadvantage. [October 2025].
It argued by some senior politicians that the increase in the number of SEND children has arisen because of over-diagnosis and that the SEND system should be reformed to reduce over-diagnosis but many parents/carers of SEND children fear that this approach may deny their children the care which they definitely need. Click here for Guardian coverage of a recent statement by Sir Jeremy Hunt and here for BBC coverage of the Labour Government’s announcement of a review into mental health and ADHD diagnosis
There is a fundamental debate within SEND education policy concerning the desirable distribution of SEND places as between mainstream schools and special schools. Thus it is argued that SEND pupils should ideally be educated within mainstream schools but that in practice many mainstream schools may lack the resources and expertise to provide adequate assistance especially for children whose special educational needs and disabilities are unfortunately particularly severe
Special Educational Needs and Disabilities are assessed via analysis of pupils’ test results, observation of pupils’ behaviour, discussions with parents/ carers and the pupils themselves and advice from outside professionals such as doctors and social workers. Detailed advice is available from the Education Endowment Foundation on the delivery of effectiveness of SEND assistance but It is also clear that the overall school policies and the quality of training received by of individual teachers and teaching assistants and hence their effectiveness varies considerably. Also as is indicated in this Press Briefing [October 2024] from the NAHT , many school leaders say that funding cuts in both mainstream and special schools are “ making it harder for both mainstream and special schools to provide the support that pupils need: from teaching assistants, and speech and language therapy, to mental health support and staff training.” The quality of assistance provided for SEND children ids highly variable and is said to result in a “post-code lottery.” Further details may be found in the Press Briefing.
Most of these pupils are receiving assistance in state schools and colleges [ both mainstream and special schools and colleges] but a significant proportion are receiving assistance from private mainstream and special schools and colleges. Thus, approximately 10% of EHC plans and 8% of SEND without EHC Support plans are provided via the Private Sector Click here for DfE data for 2o24/25 . {For information non- maintained special schools are private schools which are run by charities on a not-for-profit basis.] Private school/college pupils who have been assessed as eligible for an EHC Plan will have these plans paid for , sometimes at considerable expense, by their local authorities but this may be unavoidable for the local authorities because provision of ECHPs is legally mandatory but state- provided facilities may not be locally available which will also force local councils to incur significant transport costs.. Click here for an Observer article on Private School Provision of SEND assistance and click here for A Guardian article on transport costs. Costs for private school/college pupils requiring Non-EHCP SEND assistance will be met by the pupils’ parents
The system of SEND/ECHP provision has become increasingly financially non-viable for governments and ineffective for its users. Financially the increased number of successful applications for SEND assistance [ especially via ECHPs] has necessitated increased grants by central government to local government but these central government grants have been insufficient to meet rising demand, and successive Conservative Governments have responded by allowing local authorities to finance further expenditure via the accumulation of very substantial debts. Conservative governments have allowed these debts to continue unpaid in the short term while proposing various methods that local authorities might deploy to economise on their SEND spending plans. However, these debts will have to be repaid eventually, and the Labour Government is now in the process of finalising plans for the reform of SEND/ ECHP funding.
The procedures for determining eligibility for SEND assistance are also inefficient in various ways
Parents or carers wishing to access substantial help for their children must negotiate with their local authority for the granting of an ECHP which will guarantee that the Local Authority meet the total cost of the EHCP to be carried out either by a state provider or a private sector provider. Requests for an ECHP may be made by parents or carers but also by anyone at the child’s school, a doctor, health visitor or a nursery worker. See here [pp 10-14] for further details. Since Local Authorities are under considerable See financial pressures, they may initially reject initial applications for EHCPs. However, parents/carers may then appeal against the Local Authorities decisions which will be both time consuming and expensive although around 90% of appeals are eventually granted. However, it is primarily well- informed and affluent parents /carers who will challenge an initial Local Authority negative decision whereas less affluent, less well- informed parents/ carers may often accept the Local Authorities decisions although they may well have had a genuine case for the award of an EHCP. Meanwhile it is estimated that Local Authorities have spent up to £100 million ECHPs unsuccessfully defending appeals which have been granted.
Click here for the BBC on SEND and here for What is an EHCP?
Click here for audio discussion of difficulties obtaining ECHP application
Click here for IFS on geographical variation in incidence of SEND and differences in funding
Even if an EHCP application is successful, availability of EHCP places is more limited in some areas than others and this means that the Local Authority is sometimes legally liable to meet substantial transport costs and/or to expensive private sector provision if state provision is limited.
As already mentioned, the quality of EHCP and other SEND provision is variable because individual teachers and teaching assistants providing EHCP and SEND assistance may not have received good initial teacher training and /or because they may be unwilling or unable to access good further in -service training , perhaps because of financial constraints which mean the amount of assistance necessary is simply not available. Teachers have also stated that when they have classes containing both SEND and Non- SEND pupils, all pupils may lose out because of insufficient additional help for SEND pupils.
It is notable that some pupils eligible for SEND and EHCP assistance are likely to be unwilling to attend school and also disproportionately likely to be excluded from school as is indicated here.
Click here for video discussion with SEND children unwilling/unable to attend school and difficulties for parents
It is notable also that pupils eligible for free schools meals are more likely than pupils ineligible for free school meals to have special educational needs which clearly puts the former pupils at a double disadvantage. This id discussed in this recent report from the Sutton Trust entitled Double Disadvantage. [October 2025].
Further Links
Click here for item on Labour policy including scrapping of some free schools but not all in previous Conservative Government plans and redirecting funding to SEND provision.
This article indicates that Labour intends to create more SEND places in mainstream schools.