‘The message from Labour Conference is clear: we must get SEND reform right’

At Labour Party Conference this year, special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) proved impossible to ignore as the issue surfaced repeatedly in speeches, fringe meetings and conversations throughout the halls, emerging not as a niche policy footnote but as one of the defining challenges facing our education system and the families who rely on it.

As MPs up and down the country will tell you, it is one of the topics that concerns our constituents the most.

Education professionals, parents and MPs from across the country made the same fundamental point in different ways: the current system is broken, reform is essential, and that reform will only succeed if it genuinely reflects the lived experience and widely held concerns of the people who know it best.

I hear the same message in Smethwick and across the West Midlands that many colleagues reported from their own constituencies, with parents describing long waits for assessments, repeated battles for basic provision and a pervasive sense that the system treats them as adversaries rather than partners. Meanwhile teachers and school leaders spoke of stretched resources and the impossible position of trying to meet complex needs without the right specialist support or funding, and MPs continue to hear these stories week after week in their surgeries. Conference simply brought that reality into sharper focus and demonstrated that there is genuine public appetite for change rooted in those concerns rather than imposed from above.

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

The government is right to recognise that the status quo cannot continue, yet reform must begin from the clear principle that a child’s needs come first, recognising that children with SEND are not a homogeneous group and that there is no single model that works for every child. Improving inclusion and support in mainstream schools will transform outcomes for many, while for others with more complex or multiple needs, specialist settings are not an optional extra but the environment in which those children can learn, feel safe and thrive, so we should reject any false choice between mainstream and specialist provision. True inclusion means every child receiving the right support in the right place rather than forcing every child into the same setting regardless of what they need.

That approach requires getting the funding architecture right. Llocal authorities are under intense pressure and health partners are not always held properly to account for the elements they should fund. Rigid models relying on arbitrary bands or tiers risk treating children with intensive requirements for specialist staff, therapies and facilities as if their costs are interchangeable with those of other pupils.

A strengths-and needs-based approach – developed and tested with parents, specialist providers and people with lived experience – is essential if the new system is to reflect reality rather than spreadsheet convenience.

We must also protect the legal rights families currently rely on. The fact that the overwhelming majority of SEND Tribunal appeals are upheld in favour of parents should give us pause as it is evidence that families are often forced to fight because the system has already failed their child rather than because they are being unreasonable. Reform that weakens enforceable rights or makes challenges harder will deepen distrust and leave the most vulnerable without a meaningful route to justice. So clear information, enforceable entitlements and a fair appeals process are not obstacles to reform, but the foundation of a system people can trust.

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Speed matters because families have already waited too long, yet urgency cannot become a justification for rushing changes before the workforce, specialist capacity and facilities are in place. Poorly sequenced reform risks unintended harm, including children placed in settings that cannot meet their needs, increased distress, disrupted learning for classmates and further erosion of confidence among parents and professionals. The message from conference and from communities is not that reform should stop but that we must get it right.

That means designing the next stage with families and practitioners rather than simply consulting them after the key decisions have already been taken. National Inclusion Standards and specialist provision packages will only work if they are shaped by the people who will live with the consequences, and the same principle applies to any new funding model. Lived experience is not an optional extra in this process but the difference between a reform that looks coherent on paper and one that improves children’s lives.

Our Labour Government has a real opportunity here to deliver meaningful change that restores confidence in the system and puts children’s needs ahead of bureaucracy or short-term financial structures.

Conference showed that the appetite for the right reform exists among education professionals, among parents and among MPs who hear these issues constantly. The test now is whether we turn that appetite into a system built with families rather than done to them. Children and their families cannot afford another round of reform that fails in practice, and we have a duty to do better.

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