‘Putting Children and Young People First’ – a summary of the proposed SEND reforms

The proposals

Here, we’ll look at just some of the main themes of the SEND reforms document.

The ‘Universal offer’

The Government’s ‘Universal offer’ will set a new baseline for mainstream education settings for children and young people aged 0-25. The Universal Offer is intended to provide high-quality teaching and support and build ‘one inclusive education system for all children and young people, including those with SEND – not separate systems where some are sidelined’.

The Universal Offer includes expectations on leadership, early intervention, teaching and curriculum quality, enrichment, culture, partnership with families and services, inclusive environments, accessibility, belonging and attendance. Teachers and educators will be trained to meet the new expectations, with the Government working closely with SENCOs, leaders and families.

Targeted, Targeted Plus support

There will be new layers of support for children and young people with additional needs: Targeted, Targeted Plus, and Specialist. New digital Individual Support Plans (ISPs) will also be introduced which ‘outline the child’s specific needs and expectations for ongoing support’. This proposed change would  reserve Education Health and Care Plans for children with the ‘most complex needs’.

The three layers of support are:

• Targeted support – Settings to provide support that is developed with parents and outlined in an ISP.
• Targeted plus support – Building on targeted support with input from education and health professionals and may have access to a ‘Support Base’.
• Specialist support – On top of having an ISP and access to some of the support mentioned in the other layers, children receive an EHCP if they require the provision defined in the ‘Specialist Provision’ packages. They may receive support through a ‘Specialist Base’.

As part of Targeted Plus support, children and young people may receive access to Inclusion Bases in their mainstream settings. The Government proposes creating tens of thousands of these. The Inclusion Bases will be of two types: Support Bases (setting/MAT funded for targeted support) and Specialist Bases (LA funded for specialist support). The paper notes these will ‘replace the current terms SEN unit, resourced provision and pupil support unit’.

Individual Support Plans (ISPs)

There will be a statutory duty for all education settings to provide an Individual Support Plan (ISP) for every child or young person with SEND (including those with an EHCP) to record and monitor the provision in place. These plans will be digital documents, enabling them to be updated regularly and accessed easily, and they will form part of Targeted support and Targeted Plus support. ISPs will also support children and young people during their transition between settings.

Legislative changes will be required before ISPs come into effect. The Government envisages that each ISP will need to be reviewed annually, and its use and quality will be considered as part of Ofsted reviews of SEND provision within a setting.

Parents and young people will be able to raise concerns about their ISP through the revised school complaints procedure outlined in the education white paper. Additionally, the Government will work with parent groups, sector experts and the workforce to develop and implement ISPs, review their effectiveness and consider the potential role of peer reviews and expert recommendations.

Experts at Hand

The Experts at Hand initiative is a key part of the consultation’s intention to integrate education, health and care professionals more closely into school and early years settings.

There will be an initial £1.8 billion investment (over 3 years) in ‘Experts at Hand’ to bring education and health professionals such as education psychologists and speech and language therapists into mainstream settings. This is so that the proportion of pupils receiving multi-agency support through Targeted and Targeted Plus layers of support will be higher than those currently with an EHCP.

Specialist Support for complex needs

For children with the ‘most complex needs’ * the Government is proposing a new ‘Specialist layer of support’. Specialist Provision packages will ‘underpin the provision set out in an EHCP’ and be ‘substantially different from the usual curriculum model and approach delivered in mainstream settings’.

• The packages will be nationally defined and ‘comprehensive and evidence-based’.
• They will be developed and reviewed by experts, tested with parents and overseen by an independent chair and panel of experts.
• The new EHCPs will guarantee statutory entitlement to these packages.
• The package will outline the support required by children and young people with similar needs, their characteristics, expected outcomes, special educational provision, necessary adaptations, resources needed for package delivery, care provision, statutory entitlements and health provision – with day-to-day educational provision set out in ISPs.
• The Government is currently estimating that there will be seven different packages explaining that “onto familiar descriptions of complex SEND but others which will support a group of children and young people with different, or no, diagnoses but requiring similar support.”
• Only children with the support set out in a Specialist Provision Package will have this provision set out in an EHCP.
• A new LA-led statutory needs assessment process will determine whether they need the support set out into the package – with this process considering views of the family, setting and relevant professionals who have worked with the child or young person.
• Specialist Provision and EHCPs will be fast tracked for children under 5 who have been identified as having complex needs.
• The Government is looking to introduce a standardised and digitised EHCP template.
• EHCPs will be reviewed regularly.

*N.B. On ‘complex needs’ the Government says: “We have not provided a singular definition of this term and recognise that this language can be interpreted in different ways.”

Inclusion in the system

The Government highlights its proposed mainstream funding reforms to support early intervention and more flexible support. It says it will “rebalance funding, by moving a portion of funding currently distributed through local authorities from high needs budgets directly into mainstream core budgets, to support earlier intervention and a more proactive approach to meeting needs.”

To make funding ‘fairer’ and ‘more predictable,’ the paper proposes that specialist funding will be reformed moving towards block funding for cohorts instead of individual top-ups.

Additionally, the Government proposes that every school becomes part of a ‘local SEND group’ and that they ‘pool some of their inclusive mainstream funding’ to meet needs across their group and ‘allow for better sharing of expertise and resources across an area.’  The paper notes that there should be a culture of collective responsibility and accountability in these groups and that while collaboration can help broaden access and expertise, that schools should still have ‘greater autonomy and influence over commissioning of shared services and support for pupils with SEND.’

Questions raised

On an episode of her podcast, SEND in the experts, Georgina Durrant asked Georgia Gould, MP and Minister of State for School Standards, to clarify some of the reform plans.

Durrant questioned what would happen if a school wasn’t meeting a child’s ISP and the legal framework around this. Minister Gould explained that as part of the complaints panel, they will be bringing a new independent role into the complaints process where the complaint is around SEND support. “The complaints process is meant to be binding on schools so that will be a new  way of overseeing the process.” She also mentioned that Ofsted will be overseeing inclusion in schools including ISPs.

Durrant also asked Minister Gould to confirm that SENCOs and parents can continue to request an education and health care needs assessment. She confirmed this and explained that this ability to request will also be available under the new system as well and that those with current ECHPs will retain them through into the transition period to 20230. Durrant specifically asked, “If you have a child in Year 3 or above could a parent choose for them to retain their EHCP until the end of secondary school.” Gould responded yes and added that if a child is in a special school before 2029, they could also choose to remain in a special school throughout their education.

A neurodivergent perspective

Caroline Keep, a teacher and PhD researcher, shared an excellent critical analysis of the Every Child Achieving and Thriving white paper, from a neurodivergent perspective. We thought it valuable to share some of her thoughts, specifically relating to the SEND-focused aspects of the white paper, as many of these also sit within or relate to the SEND reform documentation.

While welcoming some of the proposals, she rightly points out that all this funding is only as good as its implementation.

Additionally, one of Keep’s substantial findings is that the words ‘autistic’, ‘neurodivergent’ and ‘neurodiversity’ do not appear in the white paper – everything sits under a blanket category of ‘SEND’ or ’complex needs’. Furthermore, the Government doesn’t define what it means by ‘complex needs’, which is important, given the proposal that EHCPs will only be for children with ‘the most complex needs’. Keep notes specifically that Autism is currently the most common primary need for children in an ECHP (33%) so its absence is concerning.

Keep also raises important questions about the difference between ISPs and ECHPs. She identifies the lack of definition on what makes a child EHCP eligible in the new system, raises questions around a legal framework for ISPs, and foresees a debate of ‘What are complex needs?’ to come.