The UK’s Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) system is at breaking point. Families, schools, and local authorities are caught in a cycle of delays, inadequate support, and growing financial pressures.
But is the issue simply a lack of funding, or is there a deeper structural problem at play?
Here we explore the key challenges facing the SEND system, including the soaring demand for EHCPs, improving EHCP quality, and whether current interventions are truly improving outcomes for students.
We’ll also examine best practices for effective SEND support and discuss whether additional investment is the solution—or if fundamental SEND reform is needed.
Understanding the Surge in EHCP Demand: Causes and Consequences
Recent years have seen a staggering 140% increase in demand for Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs). This dramatic surge raises critical questions about the underlying causes and the capacity of the system to adapt.
Why are more families seeking EHCPs since the COVID-19 pandemic?
The disruptions to education, social isolation, and delays in early intervention services have left many children struggling with unmet needs. For some, existing challenges have intensified, while others have developed new difficulties related to anxiety, communication, and behaviour.
With such a dramatic increase, the government also need to understand whether there are additional factors such as growing awareness of SEND needs, changes in diagnostic criteria, or other systemic issues.
High SEND Tribunal Success for Families:
With 98% of SEND tribunal cases finding in favour of families, it’s evident that many EHCP decisions are not meeting the SEND Code of Practice or the actual needs of children. This statistic underlines systemic failures and reinforces the need for reform in the EHCP process, ensuring that assessments and provisions accurately reflect the support required by each child.
Evaluating Expertise: Improving EHCP quality
EHCPs are primarily produced by local councils, but the process is intended to be informed by advice from a range of professionals. Several concerns have arisen regarding the quality and reliability of the inputs that shape these plans:
Reliance on Professional Advice:
The educational psychologists shortage is a major issue affecting the accuracy and depth of these assessments. With too few professionals available, the advice given is often rushed or generic, reducing the quality of plans and, consequently, the effectiveness of support provided to children.
Vague and Inadequate Plans:
Many EHCPs have been criticised for being too vague to meet the standards set by the SEND Code of Practice. This lack of specificity raises doubts about whether the plans can be effectively enacted in schools or actually improve outcomes for children.
Lack of Collaborative Input:
EHCPs by definition should be created through a collaborative process involving health, social care, and educational professionals. In practice, this level of collaboration is often missing. The necessary expert advice to address the full range of a child’s needs is frequently absent, which undermines the overall effectiveness of the plan.
Trust Issues Among School Staff:
A particularly worrying concern is that those working in schools often find it difficult to trust the advice provided by the professionals involved in drafting EHCPs. This lack of confidence in the process further complicates the implementation of support strategies in the educational setting and points to an immediate need for improving EHCP quality.
Do SEND Interventions Deliver Results? Measuring Impact on Student Outcomes
Despite the significant investment in SEND interventions, there has been no drive towards improving EHCP quality. There remains no clear consensus on what constitutes a good plan or whether the current strategies are truly effective. Several issues cast doubt on the outcomes achieved by these interventions:
Questionable Evidence Base:
Some studies suggest that many of the interventions lack evidence to support their impact or, worse, might even do more harm than good. For example, the widespread practice of 1:1 provision, while intended to offer personalized support, carries the risk of isolating the child from the broader classroom environment and qualified teachers, potentially hindering overall learning progress.
Lack of a Clear Benchmark:
There is no agreed-upon definition of a successful plan, which makes it difficult to measure improvement. The absence of standardised criteria means that what works in one school or context may not be recognised as effective in another.
Contextual Challenges in Schools:
Interventions need to be adaptable to the unique circumstances of each school. However, due to the lack of trust between schools and the bodies that produce EHCPs, there is a prevailing belief that if interventions are not explicitly documented, they will not receive funding—even when schools feel capable of tailoring support to their own context. This tension complicates both the implementation and the quantification of effective outcomes.
High Costs, Uncertain Benefits:
Billions of pounds are being invested in a system that is not consistently delivering better outcomes. The focus has largely been on the challenges of obtaining an EHCP rather than critically assessing whether the interventions outlined in these plans are truly beneficial for students. In some cases, the very process of identifying SEND needs can have unintended negative effects.
Enhancing SEND Support: Best Practices for Effective Interventions
Improving outcomes for SEND students requires a fundamental rethinking of how interventions are designed, implemented, and evaluated. Several steps can help ensure that the support provided is both effective and sustainable:
Build a Stronger Evidence Base
Improving EHCP quality requires a critical need to develop robust research that examines the impact of targeted interventions and specialist provisions. By gathering and analysing data, stakeholders can better understand which approaches truly benefit students.
Re-evaluate the Necessity for Separate Provision:
It’s important to question the long-held assumption that pupils with SEND always require entirely different support from their peers. Instead, mainstream educational approaches, which have a strong research foundation, could be adapted to meet diverse needs where possible.
Critically Assess and Evaluate Interventions:
Any new intervention should have a clear purpose and be subject to rigorous evaluation. This means not only piloting new strategies but also monitoring their impact over time to ensure they are delivering tangible benefits.
Establish a Shared Understanding of SEND
A unified definition of what SEND truly means can help the sector learn from best practices. By agreeing on common standards and terminology, schools and local authorities can collaborate more effectively and implement interventions that are consistently effective.
Challenge Conventional Beliefs
The traditional notion that children learn in completely different ways, and that SEND students require radically different provisions, deserves re-examination. Instead, it might be more effective to integrate inclusive strategies that allow all students to benefit from the same high-quality educational experiences
SEND Funding Explained: Is More Investment the Answer to a Failing System?
Increased funding is often touted as a solution, but will injecting more money into the current system help to resolve the SEND crisis. Here is how it could help.
Funding That Doesn’t Meet Needs:
Poor-quality EHCPs are frequently accompanied by insufficient funding, and schools are often expected to deliver specialist provisions without adequate resources. This gap not only hinders the effectiveness of interventions but also sets the stage for conflict between local authorities, families, and schools.
Lack of Specific, Quantifiable Support:
Many local authorities have used vague EHCP content to avoid full accountability for funding, leaving families with plans that lack measurable targets and don’t align with the SEND Code of Practice. More funding available could go a long way to improving EHCP quality, giving local authorities the freedom to write clearer, more quantifiable plans
Dependency on Quality Advice:
Ultimately, a robust EHCP is built on sound advice from professionals. Using extra funding to address the Educational Psychologists shortage and ensuring they have the time to provide thorough, tailored advice will help with improving EHCP quality and result in better outcomes for children
Conclusion: Improving EHCP quality and Fixing a Broken System
The UK’s SEND system is failing too many children, families, and schools. The surge in EHCP demand, inconsistent expertise among those drafting plans, and the questionable impact of many interventions all point to a system in urgent need of reform.
While additional funding per se may improve the EHCP process, simply injecting more money without addressing systemic inefficiencies could risk wasting more money without improving outcomes for our most vulnerable learners.
Real change requires a commitment to improving EHCP quality through evidence-based interventions, more qualified professionals involved in the process, and a shift in mindset.
By building a stronger foundation of research, improving collaboration across education, health, and social care, and restoring trust in the process, we can move towards a system that works for every child.
