Kate McGough and
Hayley Clarke,Education reporters
BBC
Support for children with special educational needs in England is fundamentally flawed, a major new report says.
The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) says there should be more comprehensive support in mainstream schools which young people can access more easily without a lengthy assessment process.
The Department for Education (DfE) says “this report rightly highlights the vicious cycle underpinning the Send system this government inherited”.
Around 1 in 5 pupils in England (1.7 million pupils) receive some kind of support for special educational needs in school, and 482,640 of those pupils (or 5% of all pupils) get the highest level of support through an Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP).
The number of pupils with an EHCP has more than doubled since 2016.
The IPPR report comes a day after the government delayed reforms to the Special Educational Needs and Disability (Send) system in England from this autumn until 2026.
Ahead of the government’s long-awaited overhaul, the BBC has spoken to young people about their experiences.
‘There’s a massive gap for people like me’
Evie, 18, got in touch with the BBC through Your Voice Your BBC News to tell us about her experience of school with special educational needs.
“I’m like a lot of other people my age, but also not,” she tells the BBC from her home in Sheffield.
“I live with a lot of complex disabilities.”
She was diagnosed with autism and ADHD, as well as visual and speech impairments, while at mainstream secondary school. Her mobility also began to rapidly deteriorate.
Her mum, a teacher at the school, was helping her cut up food and make trips to the toilet in between lessons.
By the time she was in Year 10, Evie says her physical needs had become “too much to ask” of the school, and she felt she had no choice but to leave.
But finding a place in a specialist setting wasn’t easy. Evie and her family say they looked at dozens of special schools but couldn’t find a place that could meet both her physical and academic needs.
“There’s a massive gap in the Send system for people like me”, Evie says.
“There were schools that could meet my complex health and mobility needs, but the level of learning was incredibly low.
“There were schools that were able to handle my social and emotional needs and offer higher academic level courses, but they could only handle wheelchair users that didn’t need the level of care I did.”
The result was that Evie spent three years at home, not getting an education.
“It was really lonely, the world carried on while I was stuck at home,” she says.
Evie eventually found a place at a specialist college. She’s studying for her GCSEs in English and maths, as well as a Health and Social Care course.
She wants the government to put more funding into Send and for local authorities to take more responsibility for finding suitable places for young people like her.
“At the end of the day we are just humans who want to thrive, everything shouldn’t be so much of a fight.”
The IPPR’s inclusion task force has spoken to children like Evie, parents and teachers about the changes they’d like to see.
It says local authorities should keep responsibility for creating individual plans for pupils with more complex needs and that “the current approach to supporting children with special educational needs is fundamentally flawed”.
Often families are being “driven” to seek support through EHCPs because their needs are not being met in mainstream schools, which is costing local authorities a lot more, the IPPR says.
It wants the government to introduce a new statutory layer of support in mainstream schools called Additional Learning Support, which could be accessed by a child without a diagnosis or the need for a lengthy assessment process.
It also recommends that:
- Schools, not local authorities, manage this new support with extra funding and training for staff
- Parents would have a “route to redress” if they’re not happy
- The EHCP model is replaced in the future only after consultation and when “there is significantly better support for families”
- Schools should be rewarded for being more inclusive through Ofsted inspections
A DfE spokesperson said they are “determined to deliver reforms which ensure all children can access the right help at the right time, without delay”.
“Work is already under way to make sure support is available as routine and at the earliest stage – including through improved training for teachers, £740m to create more specialist school places, earlier intervention for speech and language needs and embedding Send leads in our Best Start Family Hubs in every local area.”
Other pupils have told the BBC about their continued problems accessing special school places.
In September, 12-year-old Arav was feeling a “little bit nervous” about starting at his new special school in Warwick.
But those nerves quickly went away at the start of term, when ice creams and alpacas visited to welcome the children into a new school year.
Arav is autistic and has learning needs, and stayed on for an extra year at his mainstream primary school before moving to Evergreen School.
He enjoys the facilities like the sensory room, which he says helps him feel calm, and the adventure playground.
Head teacher Laura Hyatt says a mainstream secondary school would have been “too big and too overwhelming” for Arav.
But there’s not enough space for every child who needs a space, she says.
“This year we had about nine spaces available. We could probably fill the school twice over if we had the capacity,” says Laura.
Arav secured a place after his parents won a tribunal.
“It wasn’t an easy journey. Families and schools have to fight for what’s right for their child. But Arav’s fitting in beautifully now,” Laura adds.
Arav says he is feeling “good” and “confident” now.
‘I feel like I was disregarded’
Betsey, also 18, has just started a psychology course at the University of Greenwich, and lives at home with her parents in London.
She loves her course so far, and much prefers it to her time at school and sixth form.
That’s largely because it was only in Year 12 that she was diagnosed with autism – and missed out on extra support up until that point.
“I feel like I was disregarded a bit,” Betsey says. “But it’s also because schools just don’t have the resources and funding to cater for all the needs of Send students.”
The government has said it wants more students with Send to stay in mainstream schools.
But Betsey found the loud environment and social side of mainstream secondary school difficult, which she says had a big impact on her attendance.
“I experienced autistic burnout,” she says. “So I was really struggling to get to school and stay throughout the day.”
“I started going less, and having meltdowns before and after school, because I couldn’t cope with the environment.”
Betsey wants other late-diagnosed autistic girls to ask for support when they’re struggling, so that they don’t “slip under the radar”.
“I think a lot of autistic people maybe don’t push for the support they want because they don’t want to be an inconvenience or cause problems,” she says.
“A lot of it is down to masking. Pretending you’re not struggling, fitting in with social norms.”
“It might come across that they’re not struggling when they actually are.”
Though she’s doing well now, and receiving lots of support at university, Betsey wishes it had come earlier.
“I think it’s kind of frustrating to know I could have got support throughout school and earlier in my life.”
