August 1, 2025 • 21 mins
The UK Parliament is on recess for the summer break. The Labour Party, in particular, may be reflecting on a year that saw them go from a landslide election victory to declining popularity. While Parliament is away, we’re taking a closer look at some of the potential crises the government could face in the coming year. This week, we’re focusing on plans for children with special educational needs and disabilities.
Ballooning costs are placing more financial pressure on England’s already-stretched local councils, highlighting the urgency of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s proposed reforms in this area. However, some view this issue as the next major test for Labour MPs, particularly those who rebelled over welfare cuts. Hosted by Caroline Hepker and produced by Harry Black.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Children with special educational needs and disabilities are being failed,
with parents struggling to get their children the support that
they need and deserve, and we have to change that.
I'm determined to raise standards for every child so they
succeed in education.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
That was Keir Starmer at Prime Minister's questions in October
last year. With the government facing a huge financial shortfall
in the budget this autumn and failed attempts to cut
costs elsewhere, there is a growing concern among parents that
children with special educational needs could face cuts to their
education funding. Hello, you're listening to Bloomberg UK Politics. I'm
(00:49):
Caroline HEPKEA Education, Health and Care Plans, more commonly known
as EHCPS, were introduced in twenty fourteen. They made it
a lead requirement for local authorities to fund the necessary
provision for children aged not to twenty five with special
educational needs. When pressed on this issue in the Commons,
(01:11):
the Education Minister Katherine McKinnell said that the current government
has not made decisions about the future of EHCPS. Dame
Christine Lenehan, one of Labour's Special advisors, went further saying
that the Department of Education is considering if ehcps are
the right vehicle to go forwards. It is perhaps no
(01:33):
surprise that Labour are looking at this issue. The National
Audit Office said last year, if unreformed, the SEND system
is financially unsustainable and there are a number of estimates
around the ballooning cost of SEND. The Chartered Institute of
Public Finance and Accountancy says overspends on the sector totaled
(01:55):
about four billion pounds in the year to March, and
that will double by twenty twenty seven. Elsewhere, the INSEUPO
Fiscal Studies says that central government funding for high needs
pupils totals nearly eleven billion pounds, up fifty nine percent
since twenty fifteen. Experts put that down to the rising
(02:17):
number of ehcps being issued to children, up seventy eight
percent since twenty eighteen. But SEND parents are deeply concerned
about the contents of the yet to be announced government
white paper. Here's one parent, Tia Curry, who spoke to
me about her son who has developmental language disorder, a
(02:39):
condition she says is not well known and which she
wanted to highlight.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
When I first looked for help. I was basically just
told that there's no problem with my son, when in
actual fact there was. He was completely nonverbal. In the end,
I think I just got to a point where I
needed to seek answers, and so I look for someone
privately paid for that myself, and got the outcome of that,
(03:05):
and I used that report to then apply for the
initial EHCP. But getting that initi or EHCP isn't the
end of the battles. To be honest, that EHCP initially
issued wasn't fit for purpose, and that's where the difficulties
really increased significantly, including the financial strain on us as
(03:28):
a family, which meant to had to leave my work.
I had to support my son privately, and his needs
were not being met, so he was losing out on
his education in that time.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Tia, why do you think there was such reluctance or
inability to understand the needs of your son.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
I think it's multiple things. Really. I think the system
itself just doesn't have sufficient resources to engage with people.
So I don't think there's enough speech and language therapy.
There's not enough educational psychologists, enough occupational therapists, and so
when you need to seek a professional's input. There are
(04:09):
weight lists after weightless. You wait for on one weight list,
and when you come to an end of it and
you actually see somebody, our initial meeting that we had,
actually an initial assessment that we had with someone was
done online virtually, totally inappropriate, and they weren't able to
(04:29):
identify my son's needs accurately, and then we were put
on yet another weight list. So that weight time causes
a big issue in actually identifying needs to begin with.
Then when you actually apply for the EHCP, you have
an initial assessment done by an educational psychologist. This is
sent by the local authority, and those educational psychologists are
(04:54):
given quite strict guard rails within which they are allowed
to in put on their report. So most of these
ehcps that get issued end up being written to cater
for what provision is available locally or within a mainstream school,
(05:15):
as opposed to what the child's genuine needs are. So
there's a massive flaw just at that very initial point
that doesn't attend to the child's needs. And then of
course you end up resulting in a situation where child's
got an EHCP, the needs still aren't being met, and
(05:36):
then you have to go to tribunal.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
This must have been an immensely difficult and testing process
and a long process.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Oh, I think I must. I think it's taken about
two years of my life, and that's been two years
of you know, extreme level of stress, pressure, find actual
pressure strain on the family. Yes, it's been extremely difficult.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Are there changes to the HCP system that the current
government could make that would help?
Speaker 2 (06:13):
No.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
The idea of ehcps to be taken away from parents
and children would be an absolute disaster. That would be
I mean, I can't even imagine a world with that
that would happen, to be honest, it's unimaginable to me.
If ehcps were removed, then there's no mechanism to ensure
(06:39):
that a child's needs can be met. There's no test
that can be made against the law. A lot of
the times these ehcps being issued aren't being actually issued
considering what the law is, and that's quite troubling. Actually,
I think reform is needed, So don't get me wrong.
I think reform is very much needed. But I don't
(06:59):
think ehcps are the problem. I believe the system is
the problem. I believe the provision is the problem. That's
where the issues actually lie.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
I just wonder, though, what your message is. The government
is thinking about this now has to come up with
an exact plan, but is talking about a plan for
children and young people with special needs, special educational needs.
What would be your message to ministers and policy makers now?
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Then, I would say, please don't save up this trouble
for later. These children deserve an education. These people deserve
an opportunity to be contributing members of society, not to
become a statistic or to be one of the numbers
(07:52):
in prison or in needing mental health support. What you
want them to become is independent. You want them to
be contributing members. You want them to be earning and
spending and paying tax because they deserve it.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
So that was one parent of a child with special
educational needs on the difficulties of getting the right support
for her son with DLD. Joining us now is doctor
Susanna castro KEMP, who is director at the UCL Center
for Inclusive Education, alongside Sam Friedman, who is Senior Fellow
at the Institute for Government, as well as ex policy
(08:31):
advisor to Michael Gove at the Department for Education. Welcome
to both of you and thank you for your time, Suzana,
Can I start with you Tia Curry's experience? Is that
a common one amongst parents?
Speaker 4 (08:45):
Thank you, Caroline. Definitely. We have heard from parents in
our research that we conducted. We did an evidence review
of experiences of stakeholders in the SENSE system and we
hear this kind of testimonial over and over again in
this actual published research showing that.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
So yes, in terms of what you would say then
to someone like Nigel Farage, leader of a Form UK,
who says that too many people are claiming sen benefits,
he said that young people are being overdiagnosed. Is there
a problem with that with the number of HCP applications.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
That's a simplistic statement. I would say the problem is
a lot more complex than that. I wouldn't say children
and young people are being overdiagnosed. There's a number of
reasons why diagnoses are rising. One of them is that
we are much more aware of the needs that young
people and children present and the problem is that the
(09:47):
supports are not in place from an earlier age. So
as part of our research currently that we're conducting funded
by the Nafield Foundation, we're looking at send policy provision
across a number of different countries, and we have seen
that in other jurisdictions where perhaps there is fewer equivalent
(10:07):
to our EHCPS or less statutory support, but more extensive
and comprehensive support embedded in the mainstream school system from
early years. That's what really helps long term.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
So you see it as earlier intervention maybe being the answer.
SAM the National Audit Office i mentioned, says that it's
financially unsustainable to keep this system if it's unreformed. Local
authorities have deficits soaring partly because of education costs. I mean,
the government's allowing them to keep them off balance sheet
(10:41):
at the moment until twenty twenty eight. How should this
be addressed in your view.
Speaker 5 (10:48):
Well, it's very difficult because the system is a real mess.
It doesn't work for anybody, and it's costing far too
much money that National Audit Office study. But at the
same time, you have parents like the one you had
on your program who have had an extremely traumatic experience
(11:13):
with the current system and absolutely do not trust the
government or local authorities to reform the system in a
way that helps them and their children, especially when a
lot of the focus is on saving money. So from
both a policy and a political point of view, this
is an extremely difficult thing to get right what the
department are thinking about doing, and they haven't committed to
(11:36):
this yet, we haven't had any formal policy statements. Is
moving to some degree from what you might call an
individualized system, these education healthcare plans which take forever to
apply for a very bureaucratic, encumbersome to a cohort system
for mainstream schools, not for special schools, but for mainstream schools,
where if where schools get a lump some of AD
(12:00):
money and they decide how to support the additional needs
of all of the children in their school by and
that would allow for The idea is that would allow
for much earlier intervention because you wouldn't have to get
the educational healthcare plan before the school was able to
provide some support. So in the theory it could be
a better system for everybody, but the employer's a lot
(12:23):
of implementation challenges and that there's a very very low
trust from parents for understandable reasons.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Yeah, And I think maybe the main concern around that
is that if you remove the EHCP, that is the
legal mechanism that is the one that obliges the money
to be spent, I suppose, and so there's real wariness
if you remove that whether there would then be no
kind of safety net for parents when their children do
(12:49):
have those needs.
Speaker 5 (12:50):
Sam, Yeah, that's exactly right. That is the fear, and
again it's understandable, especially when parents had to fight often
in many cases, have had to fight so hard for
these education healthcare plans in the first place. So, I
mean part of the issue though is, again as you
heard from your interviewee, in a lot of cases, even
(13:11):
when you have this legal right, this document stating the
child's eligible for certain support, schools are unable to provide it,
aren't given enough money to provide it. Parents then have
to go back ask again. It's an incredibly adversarial and
cumbersome process, and only parents who have the time, resources
energy to fight their way through and you know, actually
(13:33):
get the support. So you have a lot of young people,
particularly from lower income background, who are not getting the
support they need under this system because they don't have
the advocates willing to fight this hard for them.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Suzanna, do we know where the ehcps actually work at
the moment in terms of the research done on this.
I mean, I know it's something that you're thinking about carefully.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
Yes, I've done extensive research on the Education, Health and
Care plans when they were first introduced, and we reviewed
with very rigorous methods hundreds of HD plans and actually
what we saw is that the vast majority of plans
are of very poor quality. They are not specific enough,
(14:17):
the goals are not attainable. They clearly show that there
is no communication and collaboration between the different sectors education,
health and social care, which was initially one of the
main aims of the Children and Families Act and the
introduction of the HC plans. So there are many things
(14:37):
that need to be improved for the HC plans to
work as they should. But I'm also not suggesting that
we should get rid of them. You know, the principle
of any EHD plan is a very good principle and
a very good idea, but it is the system around
it and the training of the workforce on various issues,
(15:00):
including cross sector collaboration, that needs to be improved.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Having said that, the change to earlier intervention and the
changes required would surely mean upfront funding, and again that's
something that is very doubtful given the constraints on the
government now.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Yes, but what we can argue then is that there
is a widely known effect called the Heckman curve that
has been studied for decades which shows that investments in
early years give us the highest returns in later life.
So it's actually beneficial for economies.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
In terms of the rising costs. Part of it is
also that send children are being sent to private schools
paid for by state because of the lack of provision
in the state sector. That surely will be something that
government looks at well.
Speaker 5 (15:58):
Part of what they're thinking about is how do you
reduce the number of children in special schools, how do
you get more children in mainstream schools. There's been a
shift away from inclusiveness in mainstream schools over the last
decade or so and they want to reverse that. And
that could be done in a variety of ways by
(16:18):
having more units in mainstream school for children who have
more serious needs and things like that. But there is
a real problem at the moment because the demand on
special schools can't be met by state special schools, so
there's a heavy use of private schools and they cost
on average about three times as much, so you're paying
sixty pounds on average and often a lot more for
(16:40):
a place at at a private special school. This is
local authorities having to pay it one of the reasons
why they're getting into such serious debt, and that money
is money that can't be spent on other children who
have needs. It can't be spent on the mainstream system,
and it's just sort of sucking resources out of the
school system. So yes, absolutely they want to bring the
number of children in private special schools down because it's
(17:05):
very expensive and franktic. It's being exploited by a lot
of private equity companies who've got into this market because
they've seen an opportunity for a quick profit.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Okay, in terms of the flip side of that, do
you think there's a financial incentive for some schools to
support their pupils in getting the EHCP so they can
get additional extra funding.
Speaker 5 (17:27):
Well, there's an incentive for everybody to get any HGP
because it's the only way to get support under the
current way the system works, both for parents and for schools.
Schools don't get additional funding for any pupils unless they
unless they get a plan. Parents can't feel they have
that guarantee of support without that legal backing of a plan,
So everyone's incentivized to get planned at the moment. That
(17:50):
doesn't mean the children who have them don't need them,
or it's not justified, or there's overdiagnosis, but it does
mean that there's this huge pressure for everyone to get
an individualized plan rather than to be supported by the
school in a more generic way because the school doesn't
have any money to do that. So it's absolutely the case,
and particularly since twenty fourteen when we had new legislation,
(18:12):
that there are more incentives in the system to get
a plan, which is why we've seen one of the
reasons we've seen such rapid growth in the last few years.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Suzanna, there's another buzzword, and it's also part of part
of what you're doing at UCL Inclusive Education, inclusion. Does
your research suggest that this model is working when it
comes to inclusion.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
The research shows that inclusion works when it's understood as
more than just placing the children in mainstream. That's not
what inclusion should be understood as that's one level. But
then there's a lot of research also showing that children
where it special educational needs to wine mainstream don't feel
like they belong to that space. What we mean by
(19:00):
inclusion is to have children in a space where they
feel included, where they feel like they belong to when
when they feel happy. So to create an inclusive mainstream space,
we need a lot more in terms of strategic planning
than just place them there.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Sam My last thought, what do you think government is
actually going to come up with in this white paper?
Do you think that there is a well thought out plan?
I mean, the Labor government's been in power for a year,
These issues have been widely understood for a long time,
and there's already been a really failed attempt to reform
(19:38):
welfare for people with disabilities and other attempts. Is this
reform of send education going to be better?
Speaker 5 (19:50):
I think we kind of have to wear it and
see what they come up with. I think they're well
aware of the lack of trust from parents. They're well
aware of the lack of pla capital of the Labor
Party has I suspect my guest is what we might
see is proposals for reform for children coming into the system,
(20:10):
but some level of protection for parents who've already have
or children who already have an education healthcare plan as
a way to try and manage concerns from existing parents
of children with needs, whilst also pushing in a new direction.
That's my guest. But we'll see. We probably won't know
until October November when this white paper comes out.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Sam Friedman, thank you so much for being with me.
Really appreciate your time. Senior fellow at the Institute for
Government and former policy advisor to Michael Gove, alongside doctor
Susanna castro KEMP, director at the UCL Center for Inclusive Education.
Thank you for speaking to us. Well, that's it from
us for today. This episode was produced by Harry Black
(20:52):
and our audio engineer was Andrew Gavin. I'm Caline, Hepger
will be back with more next week, but before I go,
I want to go back to the parent that we
heard from earlier, Tia Curry, because of course she was
describing a very difficult journey for her, her family and
her son. Now she does have her son in a
new educational setting and she had this to say about it.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
He's in the right place now when the support that
he's getting is absolutely amazing. He's getting a lot of
professional specialist support through speech and language therapy he is
getting at least once a week, not three times a week,
through various different modes, and the collaboration between the teachers
and the professionals is extremely brilliant and it's having a
(21:41):
positive impact on my son.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Children with special educational needs and disabilities are being failed,
with parents struggling to get their children the support that
they need and deserve, and we have to change that.
I'm determined to raise standards for every child so they
succeed in education.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
That was Keir Starmer at Prime Minister's questions in October
last year. With the government facing a huge financial shortfall
in the budget this autumn and failed attempts to cut
costs elsewhere, there is a growing concern among parents that
children with special educational needs could face cuts to their
education funding. Hello, you're listening to Bloomberg UK Politics. I'm
(00:49):
Caroline HEPKEA Education, Health and Care Plans, more commonly known
as EHCPS, were introduced in twenty fourteen. They made it
a lead requirement for local authorities to fund the necessary
provision for children aged not to twenty five with special
educational needs. When pressed on this issue in the Commons,
(01:11):
the Education Minister Katherine McKinnell said that the current government
has not made decisions about the future of EHCPS. Dame
Christine Lenehan, one of Labour's Special advisors, went further saying
that the Department of Education is considering if ehcps are
the right vehicle to go forwards. It is perhaps no
(01:33):
surprise that Labour are looking at this issue. The National
Audit Office said last year, if unreformed, the SEND system
is financially unsustainable and there are a number of estimates
around the ballooning cost of SEND. The Chartered Institute of
Public Finance and Accountancy says overspends on the sector totaled
(01:55):
about four billion pounds in the year to March, and
that will double by twenty twenty seven. Elsewhere, the INSEUPO
Fiscal Studies says that central government funding for high needs
pupils totals nearly eleven billion pounds, up fifty nine percent
since twenty fifteen. Experts put that down to the rising
(02:17):
number of ehcps being issued to children, up seventy eight
percent since twenty eighteen. But SEND parents are deeply concerned
about the contents of the yet to be announced government
white paper. Here's one parent, Tia Curry, who spoke to
me about her son who has developmental language disorder, a
(02:39):
condition she says is not well known and which she
wanted to highlight.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
When I first looked for help. I was basically just
told that there's no problem with my son, when in
actual fact there was. He was completely nonverbal. In the end,
I think I just got to a point where I
needed to seek answers, and so I look for someone
privately paid for that myself, and got the outcome of that,
(03:05):
and I used that report to then apply for the
initial EHCP. But getting that initi or EHCP isn't the
end of the battles. To be honest, that EHCP initially
issued wasn't fit for purpose, and that's where the difficulties
really increased significantly, including the financial strain on us as
(03:28):
a family, which meant to had to leave my work.
I had to support my son privately, and his needs
were not being met, so he was losing out on
his education in that time.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Tia, why do you think there was such reluctance or
inability to understand the needs of your son.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
I think it's multiple things. Really. I think the system
itself just doesn't have sufficient resources to engage with people.
So I don't think there's enough speech and language therapy.
There's not enough educational psychologists, enough occupational therapists, and so
when you need to seek a professional's input. There are
(04:09):
weight lists after weightless. You wait for on one weight list,
and when you come to an end of it and
you actually see somebody, our initial meeting that we had,
actually an initial assessment that we had with someone was
done online virtually, totally inappropriate, and they weren't able to
(04:29):
identify my son's needs accurately, and then we were put
on yet another weight list. So that weight time causes
a big issue in actually identifying needs to begin with.
Then when you actually apply for the EHCP, you have
an initial assessment done by an educational psychologist. This is
sent by the local authority, and those educational psychologists are
(04:54):
given quite strict guard rails within which they are allowed
to in put on their report. So most of these
ehcps that get issued end up being written to cater
for what provision is available locally or within a mainstream school,
(05:15):
as opposed to what the child's genuine needs are. So
there's a massive flaw just at that very initial point
that doesn't attend to the child's needs. And then of
course you end up resulting in a situation where child's
got an EHCP, the needs still aren't being met, and
(05:36):
then you have to go to tribunal.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
This must have been an immensely difficult and testing process
and a long process.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Oh, I think I must. I think it's taken about
two years of my life, and that's been two years
of you know, extreme level of stress, pressure, find actual
pressure strain on the family. Yes, it's been extremely difficult.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Are there changes to the HCP system that the current
government could make that would help?
Speaker 2 (06:13):
No.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
The idea of ehcps to be taken away from parents
and children would be an absolute disaster. That would be
I mean, I can't even imagine a world with that
that would happen, to be honest, it's unimaginable to me.
If ehcps were removed, then there's no mechanism to ensure
(06:39):
that a child's needs can be met. There's no test
that can be made against the law. A lot of
the times these ehcps being issued aren't being actually issued
considering what the law is, and that's quite troubling. Actually,
I think reform is needed, So don't get me wrong.
I think reform is very much needed. But I don't
(06:59):
think ehcps are the problem. I believe the system is
the problem. I believe the provision is the problem. That's
where the issues actually lie.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
I just wonder, though, what your message is. The government
is thinking about this now has to come up with
an exact plan, but is talking about a plan for
children and young people with special needs, special educational needs.
What would be your message to ministers and policy makers now?
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Then, I would say, please don't save up this trouble
for later. These children deserve an education. These people deserve
an opportunity to be contributing members of society, not to
become a statistic or to be one of the numbers
(07:52):
in prison or in needing mental health support. What you
want them to become is independent. You want them to
be contributing members. You want them to be earning and
spending and paying tax because they deserve it.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
So that was one parent of a child with special
educational needs on the difficulties of getting the right support
for her son with DLD. Joining us now is doctor
Susanna castro KEMP, who is director at the UCL Center
for Inclusive Education, alongside Sam Friedman, who is Senior Fellow
at the Institute for Government, as well as ex policy
(08:31):
advisor to Michael Gove at the Department for Education. Welcome
to both of you and thank you for your time, Suzana,
Can I start with you Tia Curry's experience? Is that
a common one amongst parents?
Speaker 4 (08:45):
Thank you, Caroline. Definitely. We have heard from parents in
our research that we conducted. We did an evidence review
of experiences of stakeholders in the SENSE system and we
hear this kind of testimonial over and over again in
this actual published research showing that.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
So yes, in terms of what you would say then
to someone like Nigel Farage, leader of a Form UK,
who says that too many people are claiming sen benefits,
he said that young people are being overdiagnosed. Is there
a problem with that with the number of HCP applications.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
That's a simplistic statement. I would say the problem is
a lot more complex than that. I wouldn't say children
and young people are being overdiagnosed. There's a number of
reasons why diagnoses are rising. One of them is that
we are much more aware of the needs that young
people and children present and the problem is that the
(09:47):
supports are not in place from an earlier age. So
as part of our research currently that we're conducting funded
by the Nafield Foundation, we're looking at send policy provision
across a number of different countries, and we have seen
that in other jurisdictions where perhaps there is fewer equivalent
(10:07):
to our EHCPS or less statutory support, but more extensive
and comprehensive support embedded in the mainstream school system from
early years. That's what really helps long term.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
So you see it as earlier intervention maybe being the answer.
SAM the National Audit Office i mentioned, says that it's
financially unsustainable to keep this system if it's unreformed. Local
authorities have deficits soaring partly because of education costs. I mean,
the government's allowing them to keep them off balance sheet
(10:41):
at the moment until twenty twenty eight. How should this
be addressed in your view.
Speaker 5 (10:48):
Well, it's very difficult because the system is a real mess.
It doesn't work for anybody, and it's costing far too
much money that National Audit Office study. But at the
same time, you have parents like the one you had
on your program who have had an extremely traumatic experience
(11:13):
with the current system and absolutely do not trust the
government or local authorities to reform the system in a
way that helps them and their children, especially when a
lot of the focus is on saving money. So from
both a policy and a political point of view, this
is an extremely difficult thing to get right what the
department are thinking about doing, and they haven't committed to
(11:36):
this yet, we haven't had any formal policy statements. Is
moving to some degree from what you might call an
individualized system, these education healthcare plans which take forever to
apply for a very bureaucratic, encumbersome to a cohort system
for mainstream schools, not for special schools, but for mainstream schools,
where if where schools get a lump some of AD
(12:00):
money and they decide how to support the additional needs
of all of the children in their school by and
that would allow for The idea is that would allow
for much earlier intervention because you wouldn't have to get
the educational healthcare plan before the school was able to
provide some support. So in the theory it could be
a better system for everybody, but the employer's a lot
(12:23):
of implementation challenges and that there's a very very low
trust from parents for understandable reasons.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Yeah, And I think maybe the main concern around that
is that if you remove the EHCP, that is the
legal mechanism that is the one that obliges the money
to be spent, I suppose, and so there's real wariness
if you remove that whether there would then be no
kind of safety net for parents when their children do
(12:49):
have those needs.
Speaker 5 (12:50):
Sam, Yeah, that's exactly right. That is the fear, and
again it's understandable, especially when parents had to fight often
in many cases, have had to fight so hard for
these education healthcare plans in the first place. So, I
mean part of the issue though is, again as you
heard from your interviewee, in a lot of cases, even
(13:11):
when you have this legal right, this document stating the
child's eligible for certain support, schools are unable to provide it,
aren't given enough money to provide it. Parents then have
to go back ask again. It's an incredibly adversarial and
cumbersome process, and only parents who have the time, resources
energy to fight their way through and you know, actually
(13:33):
get the support. So you have a lot of young people,
particularly from lower income background, who are not getting the
support they need under this system because they don't have
the advocates willing to fight this hard for them.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Suzanna, do we know where the ehcps actually work at
the moment in terms of the research done on this.
I mean, I know it's something that you're thinking about carefully.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
Yes, I've done extensive research on the Education, Health and
Care plans when they were first introduced, and we reviewed
with very rigorous methods hundreds of HD plans and actually
what we saw is that the vast majority of plans
are of very poor quality. They are not specific enough,
(14:17):
the goals are not attainable. They clearly show that there
is no communication and collaboration between the different sectors education,
health and social care, which was initially one of the
main aims of the Children and Families Act and the
introduction of the HC plans. So there are many things
(14:37):
that need to be improved for the HC plans to
work as they should. But I'm also not suggesting that
we should get rid of them. You know, the principle
of any EHD plan is a very good principle and
a very good idea, but it is the system around
it and the training of the workforce on various issues,
(15:00):
including cross sector collaboration, that needs to be improved.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Having said that, the change to earlier intervention and the
changes required would surely mean upfront funding, and again that's
something that is very doubtful given the constraints on the
government now.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Yes, but what we can argue then is that there
is a widely known effect called the Heckman curve that
has been studied for decades which shows that investments in
early years give us the highest returns in later life.
So it's actually beneficial for economies.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
In terms of the rising costs. Part of it is
also that send children are being sent to private schools
paid for by state because of the lack of provision
in the state sector. That surely will be something that
government looks at well.
Speaker 5 (15:58):
Part of what they're thinking about is how do you
reduce the number of children in special schools, how do
you get more children in mainstream schools. There's been a
shift away from inclusiveness in mainstream schools over the last
decade or so and they want to reverse that. And
that could be done in a variety of ways by
(16:18):
having more units in mainstream school for children who have
more serious needs and things like that. But there is
a real problem at the moment because the demand on
special schools can't be met by state special schools, so
there's a heavy use of private schools and they cost
on average about three times as much, so you're paying
sixty pounds on average and often a lot more for
(16:40):
a place at at a private special school. This is
local authorities having to pay it one of the reasons
why they're getting into such serious debt, and that money
is money that can't be spent on other children who
have needs. It can't be spent on the mainstream system,
and it's just sort of sucking resources out of the
school system. So yes, absolutely they want to bring the
number of children in private special schools down because it's
(17:05):
very expensive and franktic. It's being exploited by a lot
of private equity companies who've got into this market because
they've seen an opportunity for a quick profit.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Okay, in terms of the flip side of that, do
you think there's a financial incentive for some schools to
support their pupils in getting the EHCP so they can
get additional extra funding.
Speaker 5 (17:27):
Well, there's an incentive for everybody to get any HGP
because it's the only way to get support under the
current way the system works, both for parents and for schools.
Schools don't get additional funding for any pupils unless they
unless they get a plan. Parents can't feel they have
that guarantee of support without that legal backing of a plan,
So everyone's incentivized to get planned at the moment. That
(17:50):
doesn't mean the children who have them don't need them,
or it's not justified, or there's overdiagnosis, but it does
mean that there's this huge pressure for everyone to get
an individualized plan rather than to be supported by the
school in a more generic way because the school doesn't
have any money to do that. So it's absolutely the case,
and particularly since twenty fourteen when we had new legislation,
(18:12):
that there are more incentives in the system to get
a plan, which is why we've seen one of the
reasons we've seen such rapid growth in the last few years.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Suzanna, there's another buzzword, and it's also part of part
of what you're doing at UCL Inclusive Education, inclusion. Does
your research suggest that this model is working when it
comes to inclusion.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
The research shows that inclusion works when it's understood as
more than just placing the children in mainstream. That's not
what inclusion should be understood as that's one level. But
then there's a lot of research also showing that children
where it special educational needs to wine mainstream don't feel
like they belong to that space. What we mean by
(19:00):
inclusion is to have children in a space where they
feel included, where they feel like they belong to when
when they feel happy. So to create an inclusive mainstream space,
we need a lot more in terms of strategic planning
than just place them there.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Sam My last thought, what do you think government is
actually going to come up with in this white paper?
Do you think that there is a well thought out plan?
I mean, the Labor government's been in power for a year,
These issues have been widely understood for a long time,
and there's already been a really failed attempt to reform
(19:38):
welfare for people with disabilities and other attempts. Is this
reform of send education going to be better?
Speaker 5 (19:50):
I think we kind of have to wear it and
see what they come up with. I think they're well
aware of the lack of trust from parents. They're well
aware of the lack of pla capital of the Labor
Party has I suspect my guest is what we might
see is proposals for reform for children coming into the system,
(20:10):
but some level of protection for parents who've already have
or children who already have an education healthcare plan as
a way to try and manage concerns from existing parents
of children with needs, whilst also pushing in a new direction.
That's my guest. But we'll see. We probably won't know
until October November when this white paper comes out.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Sam Friedman, thank you so much for being with me.
Really appreciate your time. Senior fellow at the Institute for
Government and former policy advisor to Michael Gove, alongside doctor
Susanna castro KEMP, director at the UCL Center for Inclusive Education.
Thank you for speaking to us. Well, that's it from
us for today. This episode was produced by Harry Black
(20:52):
and our audio engineer was Andrew Gavin. I'm Caline, Hepger
will be back with more next week, but before I go,
I want to go back to the parent that we
heard from earlier, Tia Curry, because of course she was
describing a very difficult journey for her, her family and
her son. Now she does have her son in a
new educational setting and she had this to say about it.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
He's in the right place now when the support that
he's getting is absolutely amazing. He's getting a lot of
professional specialist support through speech and language therapy he is
getting at least once a week, not three times a week,
through various different modes, and the collaboration between the teachers
and the professionals is extremely brilliant and it's having a
(21:41):
positive impact on my son.
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