A report from MPs on the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee warns that families no longer have any confidence in a SEN system where 98% of tribunals are awarded in favour of families of SEN children.
The Association of School and College Leaders said this week that it is “hard to imagine a more damning report” and labelled the current state of SEND support as “truly lamentable”
The investigation found that many local authorities are facing effective bankruptcy because their spending on SEN has outstripped government high needs funding for years and has led to “substantial deficits”.
The SEN high needs deficit is now estimated to be £4.6bn. Its impact has up until now been deferred under “statutory override” rules, but these expire in March 2026 when the defiicit is set to hit local authority books hard.
In a letter to the Department of Education (DfE) and Department of Health and Social Care (DoH) urging action, chair of the PAC, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP said that this “presents an existential threat to many councils’ financial position”. Indeed, the report warns that 66 local authorites (43%) are “in danger of effective bankruptcy within 15 months”.
Elsewhere, the MPs warn of a postcode lottery of provision with many families in many areas struggling to access SEN support, and huge delays to Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs).
EHCPs are supposed to be produced within a statutory 20-week period, but the report states that local authorities issued anywhere from 1% to 100% of their EHCPs on time.
It adds: “In 2023, only half of EHCPs were issued within the statutory 20-week period. Whether children receive support depends too much on their postcode, or how well their parents can navigate an often chaotic and adversarial system.”
The report points out that only 2.5% of EHCP decisions are appealed at tribunal, but the number has increased from 6,000 appeals in 2018 to 15,600 in 2023. And of those a “staggering” 98% of cases are awarded, in whole or in part, to parents/carers.
Postcode lottery: A national ‘heatmap’ produced by the Public Accounts Committee shows huge variation in the time taken to produce an Education, Health and Care Plan (Credit: Public Accounts Committee)
The problems have, in part, been driven by huge increases in the number of students with SEN. As of January 2024, there are 1.9 million children aged 0 to 25 with SEN, with most (1.14 million) on SEN support (a 14% increase since 2015) and 576,000 who have an EHCP (upon 140% since 2015).
And while there has been a 58% increase in the DfE’s high needs funding over the last decade, this has been nowhere near enough to meet demand.
The report states: “Looking ahead, the gap between high-needs
annual funding and forecast costs looks set to rise further, with an estimated £3.4bn mismatch in 2027/28. The DfE’s current financial support programmes will have no discernible impact on these longer-term challenges nor support local authorities in managing their financial position.”
As well as long delays for EHCPs, there are also long waiting lists for specialist support, with more than 40,000 children waiting more than 12 weeks for speech and language therapy, for example.
Parents’ confidence in the system has been further undermined, the MPs say, due to the simple fact that outcomes for SEN children have not improved. They also point out that while inclusive education is at the heart of the SEN system, the DfE lacks understanding about what inclusive education actually means.
The report states: “Outcomes for children have not improved which inevitably undermines parents’ confidence in the system. Too many families struggle to get the help their children desperately need, with long waiting times for assessments and support, and tribunal cases rising.
“The DfE has not made clear what it means by inclusive education, a core strand of its approach, or how it will be achieved. A core aim of the Children and Families Act 2014 was supporting children with SEN in more inclusive mainstream schools, but the DfE has made little discernible progress. It has not defined or set out what inclusive education should look like.”
The MPs set out a number of recommendations which the DfE and DoH must respond to, including calling on the DfE to, in the next six months, set out the provision which children with SEN support should expect and “what inclusive education means and looks like”.
Further recommendations urge the DfE to better understand the cause of rising numbers of SEN, as well as understanding the reason for differences in identifying and supporting SEN across local authorities.
When it comes to the financial situation, the MPs say that the government must “urgently involve local authorities in conversations to develop a fair and appropriate solution for when the statutory override ends in March 2026, clearly setting out these plans as a matter of urgency and no later than March 2025”.
Speaking this week, Sir Geoffrey said: “Urgent warnings have long been issued to government on the failing SEND system from every quarter. This is an emergency that has been allowed to run and run. Families in need of help have been forced to spend precious energy fighting for the support they are legally entitled to, and local authorities to bear an unsustainable financial burden.
“The fact that 98% of cases taken to tribunal find in favour of families is staggering, and can only demonstrate that we are forcing people to jump through bureaucratic hoops for no good reason. It is long past time the government took action matching the gravity of this situation. And yet our inquiry found no sense of urgency amongst officials to do so.
“The immensity of this situation cannot be overstated. As a nation, we are failing countless children. We have been doing so for years. At the same time, we are creating an existential financial risk for some local authorities, caused by that same failing system. This report must serve as a line in the sand for government.”
The Association of School and College Leaders is now calling for a one-off settlement from government to wipe out the £4.6bn deficit and for “significant additional funding”.
General secretary Pepe Di’Iasio said: “It is hard to imagine a more damning report. Not only are children being failed by the pressures on the SEND system, but almost half of councils are in danger of going bust because of the government’s failure to get to grips with the problem despite repeated warnings over many years. It is truly lamentable.
“We would strongly urge a one-off settlement from the Treasury – separate from the education budget – to wipe clean the current sky-high local authority high needs deficits. The danger of not doing this is that future expenditure will go into deficit reduction rather than actual support to actual children.
“It is clear that this is about more than money alone. It is also about things like better understanding the reasons for soaring need, why there is a postcode lottery in waiting times for EHCPs, and the resources and measures required to support SEND provision in mainstream settings.
“However, there can be no escaping the fact that money is the single biggest issue. The simple fact is that the level of need is greatly outstripping capacity and resources. Without significant additional funding it is very difficult to see how this issue can be resolved.”
- PAC: Support for children and young people with special educational needs, January 2025: https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/46238/documents/231788/default/