‘SEND Matters: We need reform, but families must have a voice’

Parliament has once again become a place for families to be heard.

This month, I hosted another drop-in event in Parliament with the SEND Matters Coalition, bringing parents, campaigners and parliamentarians together to talk about the future of special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) provision. This was a follow up to our successful events with Rory Bremner (which Labour List covered here) and Nick Ferrari earlier in the year.

It was encouraging to see MPs and peers from across the house take the time to listen. The turnout showed that there is a growing understanding that SEND reform cannot simply be something done to families. It has to be something done with them.

I have spent years meeting families whose children are struggling to get the education and support they need. The stories are depressingly familiar: long waits, difficult assessments, battles over provision and parents forced to fight a system that should be working for their children.

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The government is right to recognise that the current system needs reform. But as we develop these proposals, there is one principle that must remain at the heart of everything they do: a child’s needs must come first.

That means recognising that children with SEND are individuals. There is no one-size-fits-all solution.

Last week I also met with members of the Independent Panel who are developing National Inclusion Standards and Specialist Provision Packages.

The panel heard from many MPs talking about the crisis in SEND and the crisis that our parents are currently facing, with concerns about packages not catering for children with multiple and intersectional needs.

For many children, improving SEND support in mainstream schools will make an enormous difference. But for some children with more complex needs, specialist schools and settings are not and should not be a luxury. They are the right environment, and sometimes the only environment, in which a child can thrive.

We must not create a false competition between mainstream and specialist education. Nor should inclusion mean placing every child in the same setting regardless of their needs.

If children do not get the right support and expertise then we are failing them, leaving them anxious, overwhelmed and unable to access their education. It can also have consequences for their classmates. When a child is struggling to cope with an environment that cannot meet their needs, distress can sometimes manifest in behaviour that disrupts learning or makes it harder for other children to concentrate and feel settled.

True inclusion means creating an education system where every child can learn and thrive, with the right support around them. That also means getting funding right.

Local authorities cannot cope with the funding demands, ICB’s are not currently held to account to pay for health elements and rigid funding models with arbitrary price bands and tiered cut off categories risk failing to reflect the very different needs of children.

As was raised with the independent panel, a child requiring specialist staff, therapies, facilities and intensive support cannot be treated as though their educational costs are the same as every other child.

I was pleased that the panel committed to looking at a strength and needs based funding model, this must now be developed with parents, specialist providers and people with lived experience, and properly tested before it is introduced.

We must also protect the legal rights that families currently rely on. In 2023-24, 99 per cent of SEND Tribunal appeals were upheld in favour of parents. That statistic should make all of us stop and think. It tells us that families are not simply being difficult or demanding unreasonable support. In many cases, they are having to challenge decisions because the system has failed to meet their child’s needs.

Reforms must not weaken children’s existing rights or make it harder for families to challenge decisions. Parents need clear information, enforceable rights and a fair route to appeal when things go wrong.

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And, finally, we must avoid unintended harm.

There is an understandable desire to move quickly. SEND is in crisis, people have been let down for decades and families have already waited too long. But urgency cannot mean rushing through changes before the workforce, facilities and specialist capacity needed to make them work are in place.

The message from these events was not that reform should stop. It was that reform should get it right.

The next phase of the SEND Matters Coalition campaign will bring families and supporters together again to make the case for a SEND system that puts children’s needs before funding structures, bureaucracy or convenience.

There is a real opportunity here for Labour to deliver meaningful change and to do so we must put children and families at the heart of this debate and cannot afford another reform that looks good on paper but fails in practice.

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