The scale of the crisis facing many children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) has been revealed in a new report.
Highlighting how some families are waiting years for assessments, the report puts forward an evidence-based plan to tackle the poor identification of SEND, the postcode lottery of education, health and care (EHC) plans, and to reduce the huge numbers of children not receiving the support they need to reach their full potential.
The report’s authors are the Child of the North research group of academics from the N8 Partnership universities, including the University of Leeds, and the think tank Centre for Young Lives. They say the plan within the report will help support the new government in its mission to widen opportunity.
The new research highlights how the current system is failing many vulnerable children and young people with SEND. Over 1.5 million pupils in England have SEND, meaning 40% of children are identified as having these additional needs at some point between the ages of five and 16.
Yet the current system cannot cope and has been unable to keep pace with advances made in identifying and recognising when children have additional needs and require extra support. 99% of school leaders have said that the funding they receive for pupils with SEND is insufficient.
As the report makes clear, thousands of children and parents are crying out for a faster and kinder process and better early intervention support. The report includes stark reminders of the impact on families of the stress of trying to receive an EHC plan, with parents describing a traumatic process that leaves them feeling helpless, ‘begging for solutions’, and that can have a huge impact on their mental health and finances.
Professor Mark Mon Williams, Child of the North series editor, said: “Our collective failure to support SEND is a millstone around the neck of the UK. The new government will improve the lives of millions of children and grow the economy by ‘following the evidence’. The time has come to support every child to thrive in school and ensure the benefits of a healthy and well educated population are reaped by the UK.”
The report makes a series of recommendations which offer the potential to cut the long-term costs of not acting early enough, including the use of holistic measures of child development to identify pupils with increased likelihood of having SEND; improving and extending training for professionals and families, and improving connections between systems to facilitate earlier identification and the provision of more appropriate support.
The report highlights innovative approaches illustrating the incredible work that schools, universities, teachers, researchers, and others are undertaking to ensure the best possible SEND provision.
Anne Longfield, Executive Chair of the Centre for Young Lives, said: “The SEND system is broken. Many families talk about the traumatic impact it has on their lives as they struggle to find support for their children. They are often at their wits’ end, deeply frustrated at the waiting lists and the layers of bureaucracy and hoops they need to jump through, fearful that their children’s opportunities to do well at school and beyond are being held back by an inadequate, underfunded, and overstretched system.
“Tackling the delays, the poor early identification, and the postcode lottery they have inherited should be a priority for new Ministers. This report puts forward a new evidence-based plan to identify SEND earlier and cut assessment times.
“I welcome the new Secretary of State’s decision to give responsibility for improving SEND provision to the Schools Minister, and I hope this is the beginning of a fresh start for reforming a broken system.
“We need to level the playing field of support nationally, prioritising those areas of the country which are failing to meet the 20-week goal, and being much more creative about how to achieve it.
“Ensuring that children with SEND have the support they need will also be essential to tackling the school attendance crisis, supporting all children to flourish and succeed in school, and to meeting the new Government’s ambitions to widen opportunity.”
