If you had to rank the things that parent carers want to see more than anything else in a reformed SEND system, stronger accountability would probably be top of the list.
The Department for Education (DfE) heard that loud and clear during the online ‘conversations’ it ran in December 2025 and January 2026. The SEND consultation document they published with the Schools White Paper in February 2026 shows that the DfE heard what parent carers were saying:
“Parents have told us they often do not feel listened to and want to be recognised as experts on their own children. They have also told us stronger accountability will be essential to putting the system right.”
But despite all this listening, the government’s current SEND reform proposals would make the system LESS accountable to children and young people and their families than it is now.
Where we are right now
Before we dig in, our usual warning when we’re dissecting the government’s plans:
Nothing’s changed yet, and nothing big will change until 2029. For the next few years, the current SEND legal framework will remain the same. Almost all of the major changes we’re talking about in this article will require changes to primary or secondary legislation, and that’ll take time.
These are proposals and plans – not destiny. This is what the government would like to do. Their plans might change. They might be persuaded to change their plans because of consultation feedback. They might change them because they think they can’t get the proposals through Parliament. They might run pilots and decide their proposals are unworkable. Or for some of them, the drugs might wear off.
What does ‘accountability’ actually mean?
One of the stated aims of the government’s SEND reforms is to make the system less adversarial. If needs are met early and in full, if the resources and expertise are there to make that happen, if everyone can pull in the same direction, then the fighting will stop, the hostility will leech away, and everyone will be better off.
That would be great if it happened.
But there’s a core problem here with how different groups of people define accountability.
The architects of the White Paper see accountability as a big-picture, hazily-defined, strategic thing – where accountability is largely circular, where only a small number of trusted third parties check the collective work of leaders who operate the SEND system at a high level, and where consequences and remedies vary from top level to non-existent. It’s high-stakes if you’re a school leader, low-stakes if you’re not.
Parent carers look at accountability very differently. Most of the time, we look at accountability at the individual level. Why did that organisation make that decision about my child? Did it make that decision in its own best interest, or that of my child? Was that decision flawed, or even lawful?
If the decision was flawed – and so, so often, they are– then what explanation does the organisation have for making it?
If the decision was unlawful – and so, so often, they are – then who is going to stop the same organisation making the exact same decision again for another kid like mine?
This difference in viewpoint is going to cause a lot of trouble with these reforms. Mostly, that trouble is going to be for schools and for parent carers. And given the amount of ‘listening’ that’s taken place over the last few months, it’s very hard to see this as inadvertent.
Accountability changes: National Inclusion Standards
The White Paper SEND consultation document has a five-page section on accountability. It lays out an ambition to set up a “robust and fair accountability system which enables settings to improve inclusivity and outcomes.”
As things stand, the key change here would be the creation of “clear” statutory duties for schools and colleges, “to ensure every child and young person receives timely, high-quality and effective support,” potentially including non-state early years settings too. Settings would be required to follow new National Inclusion Standards “to plan appropriate support for their cohorts.”
There’s no substantive detail on either these new statutory duties or the National Inclusion Standards yet.
The new SEND system would have four layers (or tiers) of support. If your child is deemed to need extra support via any of the three upper layers (Targeted, Targeted Plus, and Specialist), then their setting would have a legal duty to produce a digital Individual Support Plan (ISP), updated at least annually, “developed with parents,” and including as-yet unspecified detail on “identified barriers to learning,” provision, and outcomes.
Complaints about Individual SEND provision
It looks like ISPs are intended to be the key accountability mechanism for extra day-to-day SEND support. The paper is very clear that schools and colleges would be on the hook for these, not local authorities. We’ll be looking in detail at these soon.
If you, as a parent carer, have concerns about the quality of provision the setting is delivering, or a failure to meet needs, or the inability of the LA to provide the extra resources that the school needs, that is going to be very much the setting’s problem – not the LA’s.
Obviously, everyone hopes the brave new world will mean nobody will need to dispute anything. But if you do, then it’ll be the school’s (or trust’s) complaints process that the government will want you to follow.
The DfE says it “will work with school and college leaders, parents and the sector to strengthen the mainstream school and college complaints process.”
If the complaint involves SEND provision, the DfE would like the complaints panel to include “a SEND specialist, such as a SENCO, inclusion lead or senior school leader with SEND experience, who is independent of the school and, if relevant, trust.”
It’s unclear how far removed this ‘independence’ would be. A local school SENCO or leader would be working frequently with other local schools and trusts – the White Paper proposals would positively encourage this collaboration, through provision sharing, and pooled funding. And these are already an extremely stretched group of people. If complaints pile up, where are they going to find the time?
Accountability for schools and colleges: Ofsted does the heavy lifting
And the heavier accountability wouldn’t just apply to ISPs. Once reformed EHCPs start to arrive after 2029, under current proposals, the statutory duty to make provision would fall to the setting, not the LA, as is currently the case.
Ofsted inspections will be the main vehicle for accountability here. Ofsted changed its inspection framework last year to include assessment of inclusion, and inspector training has changed to reflect this. You can find a background article on the inspection framework (and the definition of inclusion) here.
It’s too early to tell what difference the new framework is making. Schools and colleges have pointed out the real-life tension between assessing inclusion and assessing pupil attainment, behaviour and attendance.
In return, they’ve been told that there’s no trade-off between high standards and inclusion. In theory, that’s true. In practice, a lot depends on how inspectors go about their job. And inspectors have no remit at all to interrogate admissions processes.
If all goes well, then this approach to inspection could end the days when SEND parents view a school’s pride in its Ofsted ‘outstanding’ rating as a massive red flag. If it doesn’t go well, then settings will contort their approach to inclusion to ensure they can jump through as many twirling, shape-shifting inspection hoops as possible.
Schools and colleges will also be ecstatic to learn that “the use and quality of ISPs will be assessed through Ofsted’s inspections and assessment of SEND provision at a setting level.”
At the moment, it’s not at all obvious how Ofsted would do that – or to put it bluntly, how well they would do that.
A different view of accountability
But the White Paper’s reliance on Ofsted inspections for this aspect of SEND accountability will be another example of the difference between what parent carers think accountability means and what system leaders think it means.
Years normally pass between routine inspections of school and college settings. If there are problems with your kid’s support that the school’s complaints process can’t resolve, and if those problems occur consistently across a school or a trust, this system is not well set up to deal with that quickly.
The White Paper nods at that problem. The DfE promises a yearly data review to check for dodgy behaviour like off-rolling and use of off-site provision, and says that it will “explore options for strengthening independent scrutiny over school complaints data.”
But none of that will help you in a timely fashion if your own child is about to sink, or is sinking, due to problems that could be completely out of the school’s control—or directly caused by them. You’re on your own, unless your issue meets the threshold for a disability discrimination appeal to the SEND Tribunal or a judicial review. And even then, you’d need resources to mount that.
Oh, and if you’re a parent carer who wants to contest the findings of an Ofsted inspection? The odds are very much against you. Para 16 of the Ofsted complaints process says it “will not normally consider a complaint about an inspection or other activity from a third party who is not directly involved, such as a parent or other user of the service.”
Accountability for local authorities and health services
The role of LAs would change a lot under the proposed reforms. They would keep a broad responsibility for ensuring sufficiency of SEND provision in their local area, and LAs would lead local area partnerships aimed at ensuring that everyone is working nicely together: health services, education settings, parent carers, and the LA itself as a provider of education and social care services.
Under the proposed new system, the DfE will “strengthen the LA role to support providers,” through a process they haven’t yet specified.
LAs will keep responsibility for managing EHCP processes and ensuring sufficiency of provision at a strategic level. But they will no longer be on a legal hook to ensure that EHCP provision is delivered. As we’ve highlighted in an earlier post, the long-term aim is to make the content of post-2029 EHCPs conform to a set of Specialist Provision Packages.
Since 2016, SEND services in local area partnerships have been inspected by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission. Under the new system, these ‘area SEND’ inspections will remain the main tool of accountability for local areas.
The area SEND inspection framework will be overhauled and reformed, and would probably begin operating in September 2029 alongside the new SEND legislation. It’s unclear as yet how these inspections will change.
Inspection failure
Alongside that, the government has pledged to “continue to support and intervene when local authorities and NHS Integrated Care Boards do not meet the expected standards, and where local decision making is poor.”
This is something that the previous and current government has been doing for years through a consultant workforce dominated by retired LA managers, to a largely homoeopathic effect. Or in the DfE’s words, “support and challenge through expert improvement advisers, commissioners, and DfE managed programmes including tailored, peer-to-peer support from our sector-led improvement partners.”
The government also says it “will make use of intervention powers, including consideration of installing a trust to take over the local authority’s responsibilities, where they fail.”
Again, these powers exist already: they are barely used, and achieve next to no impact. MPs like Chris Coughlan and organisations like Measure What Matters have laid out the extent of failure to meet obligation here in forensic detail.
This is an accountability model that has clearly failed to deliver for over a decade, in large part because of the bureaucrats involved. It looks like there are no plans to change it. Or them.
Accountability for Individual SEND decisions
Again, there’s a huge, huge gulf between this type of strategic-level accountability – which largely takes place via the medium of system insider interactions, closed-shop meetings, PowerPoints with key performance indicators, and almost zero tangible impact or professional consequence – and what parents want: accountability for awful individual decisions.
For decades, the SEND Tribunal – and to a lesser extent, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman – have been the mainstays of accountability for individual decisions.
The proposed reforms will change the role of the Tribunal substantially. We’ll have a separate post out soon looking at what those proposals will mean for SENDIST’s scope and remit.
But it won’t be much of a spoiler to say that the reform proposals will drastically curb the ability of parent carers to hold SEND bureaucracies to account for the decisions those bureaucracies make about their individual children. And that’s not inadvertent; it’s a feature, not a bug, of the proposed future SEND system.
The circle jerk of accountability
This is a core philosophy running through these reforms. By and large, the organisations that run it – many of whom have been instrumental in driving the current system over a cliff – will be holding each other to account, and doing it only at a strategic level. Where life-changing, sometimes lethal mistakes that affect individuals will only rarely come into focus.
This isn’t new. We’ve already experienced this model – its powers are just being shored up, and its gates are being reinforced.
It’s the KGB’s ‘circle of accountability,’ where bureaucracies watch each other, sometimes tussling passive-aggressively, but where it’s in no one’s real interest to challenge or upset things when they become truly rotten.
At ground level, the power to contest individual decisions might look like it’s expanding, through the establishment of statutory Individual Support Plans. But as things stand, that power doesn’t look like it’d be attached to any real remedies. And it’s clear the proposed changes to Tribunal powers would substantially weaken accountability for individual decisions.
If a new SEND system running on these lines is anything other than a spectacular success for children and young people, then schools and colleges are going to experience an enormously increased bureaucratic burden.
The reformed system places more accountability pressure on settings – pressure that goes well beyond the stresses and strains of high-stakes Ofsted inspection. And a decision to place the legal burden of delivering EHCP provision on the setting, rather than the LA, will intensify that burden even further.
If things go wrong with these reforms – even for reasons largely or completely beyond the school or college’s powers – then the complaints process is likely to become swamped. Parents with the knowledge and/or resources to pursue legal redress can and will do so.
This model wouldn’t reduce adversariality in the SEND system. If the reforms don’t succeed, then it’ll simply channel tension elsewhere – lower down in the system, where it wouldn’t inconvenience the high-priced help so much.
SNJ will be continuing to analyse the proposals over the next week or so, and helping you answer the 12-week consultation. Find everything here.
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Edited by Renata Watts
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Also read:
- REGISTER NOW! WEBINAR on the Government’s plans to cut EHCP and EOTAS rights. With SNJ & SEND legal charity, SOS!SEN
- Navigating constraints: Why a former PCF chair thinks the current model is missing the mark for families
- Dear Secretary of State for Education, Lucy Powell: an Open Letter from Special Needs Jungle and SEND legal charity SOS!SEN
- Research: Disabled young people define inclusive education as “learning in the place that’s right for them”
- Why every child deserves Portage, wherever they’re born
- Mainstream SEND Funding: A simple explainer, another consultation, and why it really matters
- What might the SEND reform proposals mean for specialist tutors, alternative provision and EOTAS?
- When Home-to-School Transport Doesn’t Fit: The Reality of Section 19 EOTAS
- EOTAS Consultation: A further assault on children’s SEND rights with cost saving and reintegration to schools at its heart
- What schools and practitioners are missing about Tamil and South Asian families trying to navigate the SEND system.
- Allergy Guidance issued—but wider medical conditions guidance back for more work
- Home education: Five practical tips to create a neuro-affirming Unschooling environment* GIVEAWAY!
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Matt specialises in SEND stats, data analysis, and in-depth investigations of policies. He has given evidence to several Parliamentary Select Committee inquiries, and his articles for SNJ on SEND funding, local government policy, and the SENDIST Tribunal have been quoted in Select Committee inquiry reports and national media.
- Mainstream SEND Funding: A simple explainer, another consultation, and why it really matters - July 22, 2026
- EHCPs 2026: A relentless rise, but who’s surprised? Plus SNJ’s annual LA Hall of Shame - June 27, 2026
- SEND 2026: Tracking a decade of rising need with earlier EHCPs and moves to specialist provision for secondary - June 12, 2026
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