Towards an effective and financially sustainable approach to SEND in England

The SEND (special educational needs and disability) system in England is ‘failing to deliver for children, young people and their families’ and ‘despite the continuing and unprecedented investment, the system is not financially sustainable.’ This was the previous government’s verdict, set out in the national SEND review, 10 years on from the landmark SEND reforms that were introduced through the Children and Families Act 2014. 

This research, commissioned by the Local Government Association (LGA) and County Councils Network (CCN), has taken as its starting point the fact that there is broad agreement on the need for fundamental reform of the SEND system in England. The research has sought to answer three questions:

• What are the root causes of the challenges seen in the SEND system that need to be addressed in order for the approach to SEND in England to be effective and sustainable?
• Does the previous government’s improvement plan adequately address those fundamental challenges in the system?
• What is needed in terms of national policy reform to address the root causes and deliver an effective and sustainable approach to SEND?

The research conducted by Isos found:

• Reform of the SEND system is essential. Judged against their original intentions of improving outcomes, reducing disputes, and joining up support for families, the 2014 SEND reforms have not been successful. In the qualitative survey, Isos put forward five prerequisites of an effective and sustainable SEND system – financial sustainability, adequate levels of funding, resources allocated fairly, equity, and impact in achieving outcomes. More than nine in 10 respondents disagreed or strongly disagreed that these characteristics were reflected in the current SEND system.
• Reform of the SEND system is also unavoidable. The choice is when, not if. Delaying fundamental reforms of the SEND system will leave the issues unchanged, but will increase the cost of reform in every sense – not only the financial cost, but the cost of missed opportunities and negative experiences for families and practitioners. In 2018, we undertook research into the causes of pressures on high needs spending. The issues Isos have found in this present research are the same as those in 2018, but the costs have increased.
• The root causes of this crisis are systemic and require national reform. While there are examples of good practice across the system, these exist in spite of the national system. Any attempt to reform the SEND system that focuses only on local practice, without altering the national rhetoric and policy framework, is destined to fail. In this research, Isos attach no blame to any group of actors within the SEND system – not to parents and carers for seeking what is best for their children, nor to education settings, nor to council and health service leaders struggling to balance competing priorities and stretched resources. The challenges in the SEND system are not the result of any group behaving in unreasonable ways, but instead the result of an incoherent system that inadvertently perpetuates tension, creates adversity, and sets everyone up to fail.