Call me weird, but I was quite looking forward to this hearing of the Commons Public Accounts Committee this week. The National Audit Office report was so damning, I was relishing the opportunity to see officials from both the Departments for Education and Health grilled on their clear failings. I have now watched it twice, and never want to watch a second of it again.
The session was billed “The session will likely see both Departments challenged on how to ensure the system delivers better outcomes for children and young people.” If only that had happened.
Instead, officials misrepresented everything from the state of the system, appeals statistics, evidenced-based practice, the aims and impacts of schemes like Safety Valve, and even the nature of autism. Lots of blue-sky thinking, excuses, and little-to-no mention of the children in the system right now. It was three hours of pure, barely-challenged drivel with some pretty concerning undertones. I’ve tried to cover the main areas – many others were touched on briefly so you could watch the whole thing, if you need a boost to your blood pressure.
What even is SEND?
If you believe the senior civil servants of the DfE, there is no actual definition of SEND. SEND only exists, they claim, relative to what support is “ordinarily available” in mainstream schools. If you need more than that, you have special educational needs. If not, you don’t. Throughout this marathon three hours, where precisely the same words were said in several hundred different orders, the definition of SEND is “broad”, “dynamic”, “relative” and even “circular”. Ps, there is a clear legal definition of SEND as below:
Section 20 Children and Families Act 2014 defines a child as having Special Educational Needs (SEN) if he or she “has a learning difficulty or disability which calls for special education provision to be made for him or her”.
A child is considered to have a learning difficulty if she or he:
- has a significantly greater difficulty in learning than the majority of others of the same age; or
- has a disability which prevents or hinders them from making use of facilities of a kind generally provided for others of the same age in mainstream schools or mainstream post 16 institutions.
Nevertheless, top DfE civil servant, Susan Acland-Hood, instead tried to use the Children and Families Act 2014 tried to assert that SEND actually means needing “more than what’s usually available”, not more than what others need. “SEND is inherently defined relative to mainstream education” in that a child has needs “which calls for special educational provision to be made for him or her. So it is, to some extent, a little bit circular”
But at one point, she talked herself into a corner about “ordinarily available provision”, saying that it’s “what every school should be able to do for a child with some needs that differ from their fellow pupils”. So clearly SEND does have a definition beyond available provision, and quite an obvious one.
For example, if a visually impaired child needs a QTVI (qualified teacher for the visually impaired) and you put one in every school in England, that would become ordinarily available provision. But, only children with a visual impairment would need help from them. They would still have SEND. You can’t erase SEND by making provision, you can only meet their needs and hopefully improve their outcomes (although, as the NAO reports shows, that’s certainly not a given).
Why is this important? The biased, LA-funded disasterpiece of a report from ISOS Partnership (more about them later) earlier this year recommended we redefine SEND entirely. That matters, because the legal protections afforded to disabled children will be lost if they’re no longer classed as having SEND at all. Why change the law when you can just change who’s covered by it? That’s much quicker and more insidious. This is absolutely something we need to watch out for (or, to use unbearable civil service jargon, let’s all “be alive to this risk”, shall we?).
Whose fault is it anyway?
The civil servants of the DfE want it to be very clear that the DfE’s failure to have a plan or demonstrate sufficient progress is in no way the DfE’s fault. The problem, they say, is merely one of resources: over time, resources have been diverted to children with EHCPs, and away from non-statutory SEN support and early intervention. Acland-Hood says it’s “completely rational” (ISOS lingo right there) that parents would seek an EHCP under these circumstances, “As more resource in the system goes towards supporting those who have statutory plans, it becomes more and more rational for as many people as possible to keep seeking those statutory plans because there’s less resource left for people who haven’t got them. And breaking out of that vicious cycle has got to be an incredibly important part of what we do”
Essentially, much of what she says sounds similar to comments from SEND campaigners who do get it, but with an entirely different slant. This absolutely is a failure that has risen from the deterioration of non-statutory support. And yet… none of us would ever present this as inevitable. If more resource were needed to meet statutory needs, the government could have chosen to ensure that early intervention and non-statutory support was still funded, in order to prevent the cost of statutory support growing. They didn’t, and now 2/5ths of local authorities say they are about to go bust.
A government failing to make non-statutory provision available because they didn’t factor it into the budget is not inevitable. This government has the opportunity to reverse course and fix that problem… but it doesn’t sound like they are going to. Which brings us to…
“Inclusive mainstream”
If I never hear the phrase “inclusive mainstream” again, it will be too soon. I lost count of how many times it was repeated, and the fact that this is the government’s primary focus. We know this because they said so explicitly at least three times. “I think the government has made really clear that a deep commitment to inclusive mainstream is absolutely at the heart of our approach”.
Unfortunately, no one bothered to define the term “inclusive mainstream”. Helen Hayes MP, also chair of the Education Select Committee, asked for the government’s definition of inclusion, but she didn’t get one.
DfE Director of SEND, Alison Ismail, says they need to do more to understand how they should be “supporting people with those needs where we’ve seen the biggest growth […] to get that balance right and make sure local authorities can get their provision on a sustainable footing”. In English, this means: how do we shoehorn more neurodivergent children, those with speech and language needs, or with severe mental health needs into mainstream settings so we can save money? If some LAs are doing it, then it can be done. Funnily enough, there was no discussion of how outcomes compare for those children in mainstream versus specialist, and nobody on the committee thought to ask.
There was a vague discussion of supporting resource base provisions that “allow children to spend some of their time in mainstream classes and some being supported outside” but that these are used “very variably across the country”. But the realities of resource base provisions vary significantly, particularly when it comes to children any spending time in mainstream classes. Calling them inclusion seems like a big stretch.
There was more talk, as ever, about (the mythical holy grail) of early intervention: “meeting children where they are”, moving resources “upstream” so that needs are identified earlier and costly later intervention is avoided. But there was no mention of any plans for the thousands of children and young people who are already drowning. Early intervention is crucial, so why has it been so hard to achieve in the last decade? This failure is why so many need greater provision when they do get help, and while there is an intellectual understanding of this, there still isn’t the funding at SEN Support level to make it a reality.
Acland-Hood says “I’m very conscious that when we talk about inclusive mainstream, there’s a risk that parents may hear that as seeking to support children in mainstream who really need specialist provision”. Yes, there’s definitely a risk that parents will hear this, as it’s exactly what she’s saying.
EHCPs – no longer needed?
The DfE is also very keen on children getting help without needing a statutory plan, and who could argue with that? Wouldn’t that be great? But let’s not forget, this is the same DfE that’s presided over chaos for the last decade when they could have focused on early intervention. But now the coffers are bare, with the NAO report making clear there’s no pathway or funding to provide this.
Parents and schools seek plans because non-statutory support is insufficient and not guaranteed. An EHCP is a legal document that can (and often has to be) be enforced. Front-loading support so it’s easy to get will be the biggest “lever” to reducing the number of EHCPs– not redefining SEND, not parental confidence, not “inclusive mainstream”, and definitely not Safety Valve agreements. Investment and accountability are what’s needed. EHCPs are the reassurance that support must be provided even when budgets are slashed and teachers burn out and leave.
Acland-Hood generously acknowledges there’ll “always be some people whose needs will be much better met in a specialist setting”. But the mismatch between officials who think the specialist support threshold is too low, and parents who know exactly how hard it is to get support, will create even more anger if cuts are further pursued before it’s proved non-statutory support is always available and reliable.
Safety Valve is doing great… apparently
To hear the DfE tell it, Safety Valve is a wonderful programme that’s slashing deficits and helping LAs support more children. Unfortunately, anyone who knows anything about Safety Valve knows that’s simply not true. And the DfE officials’ description seemed designed to confuse:
“We’ve used both the Change programme […] and our work through Safety Valve and Delivering Better Value– both of which, in different ways, work with local authorities to look at… how they can… shift… provision from err… kind of, later intervention to earlier and more widespread and inclusive intervention”.
I’m not surprised it was difficult to get through such a flagrant misrepresentation of what Safety Valve is and does.
If you’re unfamiliar, Safety Valve essentially bribes local authorities to cut their SEND spending and therefore their provision, powered by the threat of bankruptcy. That “shift” is very literal – shift your resources away from those costing you too much money, or you’re screwed. And the system has been, by all accounts from those in Safety Valve areas, an abject failure with several suspended due to failing to meet the impossible targets. Acland-Hood claims these schemes have allowed councils to, “support more children, more effectively in mainstream schools in a way that is supported by parents”. Which only suggests she needs to speak to SEND parents more often.
Presenting these schemes as a way to help LAs “to serve children and young people better” is an insult. To meet Safety Valve targets, councils need to make immediate and deep cuts to the number of EHCPs issued to have any hope of meeting their targets. This doesn’t allow sufficient time or funds to invest in preventative or early intervention work to see any natural reduction.
Safety Valve off the rails
The aim of government plans should be to reduce the number of children who may need an EHCP years from now; you can’t just divert funds and resources away from statutory help towards non-statutory help (as Safety Valve agreements require) now and have it all work out swimmingly.
Unfortunately for the DfE, one of the committee members is also a Surrey councillor, who therefore knows full well what Safety Valve is. Rebecca Paul MP asked pointedly: “Are we going to see a decrease in EHCPs being issued as a result of LAs being encouraged effectively to issue less, to meet the efficiencies that have been set in the SV agreement?”. The response is the exact denial you’d expect, despite what we’ve seen: “Reducing EHCPs isn’t the goal. Meeting more peoples’ needs more quickly is the goal”. Nobody said the goals were achievable…
There are also claims that “we have seen, in the majority of areas where we’ve got safety valve agreements, those deficits starting to come down”. We’d love to see the evidence to support that statement as, from what we’ve seen, several Safety Valve LAs are struggling to even meet the targets for cuts to reduce their annual overspend, let alone touch their deficits, and one third are still on track to issue section 114 notices. Where they are coming down, they aren’t coming down organically – and even with the Safety Valve bung from the DfE, most LAs on the scheme will end this financial year with a bigger deficit than they had at the start of the year.
Stunningly, we recently learned that ISOS Partnership (yes, them again) has been contracted to assess the impact of Safety Valve agreements on children and families. But wait, is this the same ISOS that’s also consulted with some of these same LAs on developing their own Safety Valve agreements? Why yes it is, so you might want to limit your expectations accordingly. Move along, nothing to see here…
Misleading, on one-to-one…
Some parts of the meeting felt misleading in ways that could be fundamentally damaging to children with SEND. When discussing 1:1 support, Acland-Hood cited an Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) review, claiming they found 1:1 to be potentially detrimental, and well-specified small group learning leads to better outcomes.
Unfortunately, the EEF reviews don’t say that at all. Yes, there is evidence that small-group work can have positively impact outcomes. The page on one to one tuition states “On average, one-to-one tuition is very effective at improving pupil outcomes”, and shows more improvement than small group work. However, 1:1 is obviously not as cost-effective. She may have been recalling the DISS study from 2009, but that was 15 years ago, and the EEF reviews looked at 62 studies up until 2021.
Misunderstanding the evidence on this topic could have profoundly negative effects on children who rely on this support, so we feel it’s important that this is highlighted, and hope that the committee ask for clarification on this issue.
…and on tribunal statistics
The section on appeals was particularly infuriating. Luke Charteris MP, challenged the witnesses on appeal statistics referencing appeal statistics showing 98.3% of parents prevail at Tribunal. Unfortunately, he made it more about so-called sharp-elbowed parents’ advantage over poor families, instead of understanding nobody has an advantage here, only disadvantages perpetuated by the system.
Acland-Hood didn’t like this much. She acknowledged the “headline number is one that should give us all pause” but countered by saying “about 2.5% of appealable decisions go to appeal so I think it’s worth remembering that is quite a small proportion of the total decision-making”, thus completely missing the point about the inaccessibility of the system. But when she said she did think “it favours those who have got the capacity to navigate” appeals, we’d like to remind her that literally none of us “have” that capacity, we just have to find it, to the detriment of ourselves and our families.
She then claimed the way stats are recorded meant any aspect of the case going in favour of the parents is counted as, “a win, as it were, for the parents” which “does rather push that number up […] We are working with the tribunal to try to disaggregate that more because that doesn’t necessarily help us understand what is happening”.
I checked this with our resident statistical expert, Matt Keer, who took a dim view of what amounts to a misrepresentation. He clarified that the 2.5% appeal rate is the official figure – but it’s a fantasy, as it assumes that the system works as it’s supposed to. It includes every theoretically appealable decision, including annual reviews. But as annual reviews are often a misnomer, many of those opportunities to appeal do not actually exist.
As over 80% of these theoretical appealable decisions are annual reviews, that means the annual appeal rate is massively under-estimated—and DfE civil servants know this. Appeal rates for refusal to issue an EHCP, for example, are around 25%, again, the vast majority of which go in favour of families, based on the Freedom of Information work that Matt has done. Furthermore, the number of appeals where some parts are found in favour of parents and some in favour of the LA are recorded as “mixed results” by the Tribunals Service, and the number is so small that they are not statistically significant.
A rare moment of challenge
Still, at least Michael Payne MP provided a moment of challenge, reminding the witnesses that this 2.5% appeal figure represents 15,600 of some of the most vulnerable families in our country. Notably, this discussion of appeals contained the only clear answer of the session from Mr Charteris:
Luke Charteris: “But ultimately with 1 in 40 now going through appeal, it’s not very good VFM [value for money] for the taxpayer either is it?”
Susan Acland-Hood: “No”
He also asked: “Do you think LAs have an incentive and have been actively reducing support when EHCPs have been reviewed, on purpose, due to financial constraints?”
“I’ve got no evidence of that” replied Acland-Hood. Ask some parents, Susan. We’ll gladly share some.
That autism comment
After the meeting finished, I shared a 30-second clip where Acland-Hood said something incredibly ill-advised about autism:
“ASD used to be seen as a kind of discreet… so it used to be described as “autism”, it used to be seen as a kind of… ‘you have it or you don’t have it’ condition. It is now really widely recognised that it is a spectrum condition and so it’s not susceptible to a kind of ‘yes or no’ diagnostic process. It’s much more susceptible to an understanding that there is a range responses that you will see in the normal distribution of the population”.
Susan Acland Hood, Department for Education
We really should let the DSM-5 people know Susan’s got a better definition than theirs. Her woefully inaccurate, jaw-drop comment has led to distress among autistic people and their families. It’s like saying vision is a spectrum, so it’s no longer possible to diagnose a severe sight impairment. There are diagnostic criteria and thresholds for a great many conditions that are diagnosed every day. You’d hope the most senior civil servant in the DfE would get that, given how often they talk about the “growth in demand” in this area.
What’s fair, and to whom?
As a sidenote, it was alarming how many committee members had to declare an interest as a current or former senior council figure. It’s no surprise there seemed to be most concern about LA finances, given the statutory override and the high risk of section 114 notices being issued by many councils. Susan Acland-Hood stated that, when the statutory override was introduced, “it was believed those deficits would be a short term and relatively localised thing while those reforms were bedding in. I don’t think that is something we believe any more”.
There was a painfully long section where “fairness” to local authorities was discussed – apparently, any solution to the deficits is unfair to local authorities who don’t have huge deficits or who’ve used their reserves. Funnily enough, there wasn’t much coverage of the unfairness to disabled children and their families of this entire system.
Right at the end of the meeting was a particularly troubling exchange:
Susan Acland-Hood: “The system doesn’t give very many levers to a local authority once there is a plan with some need and a preferred provision specified in it. At the moment, the system doesn’t give very many levers to look at cost at all”
Clive Betts: “You’ll have to identify the levers that they need, and agree them”
Susan Acland-Hood: “That’s the work that I’m describing us doing with ministers”
I’m not sure either party really grasps what they’re asking for, or have admitted to, here. The reason the system doesn’t “give many levers to look at cost” once an EHCP plan is in place is because it’s a statutory plan. Changing things that give them those levers can only mean legislative change, which is the most concerning thing that could happen. I have no doubt this plays into the ISOS recommendation around non-judicial methods of dispute resolution rather than the tribunal system.
What about our kids now?
The most frustrating part of the entire meeting for me was the absence of discussion of how we will ensure that those already in the system, those not caught “upstream” (ugh), are not abandoned and failed even more than they are now. Of course it’s important that we build a better system for the future, so that it’s easier for children to get help earlier, and so that they can be genuinely included in a higher quality, accessible education. But what about our kids now?
Nesil Caliskan MP, who pointed out that only 14% of EHCPs are issued within 20 weeks in her constituency, said there is “not a week goes past without me being contacted by a parent who is at breaking point, who describes to me the process of trying to fight for a plan for their child. It is the job of a parent to do the best they can for their child but at the moment the system means they are fighting against it, and it is causing a huge amount of stress and anxiety, and it is too often the very families who need the most support who are finding themselves not able to get the plan they need for their child”. This was one of few moments where the real victims of this broken system – the children already being failed – were considered at all.
One of the MPs asked what the impact of the delay on the SEND improvement plan was on children, and the answer from Acland-Hood did not even mention children at all. To give you an idea of the level of scrutiny involved here, nobody acknowledged this oversight, and they moved on to the next question.
The DfE may be keen to ensure that parents have confidence in their plans and in mainstream education, but leaving current pupils with SEND almost entirely out of the discussion will not inspire any confidence whatsoever. We need to know what is going to happen to our children. Failing them further will impact them and us for the rest of our lives, and we will absolutely fight for them if that is our only option.
What’s really going on here?
Remember that ISOS Partnership report I mentioned at the start? If you read it, you’ll probably recognise many of the talking points and approaches here. In fact, Acland-Hood essentially confirms as much, saying “The ISOS report that was published in the summer, which was sponsored by the LGA, was a really helpful contribution and is something we are looking at really carefully with ministers as we shape the next phase of this”.
When you look at all of these recent reports together, like the Delivering Better Value report that claims so many children can be moved to mainstream and particularly to resource bases / hubs, as well as comments from the Education Secretary about the “over-reliance on EHCPs”, the direction of travel becomes very clear. And, right on cue, Education Minister Catherine McKinnell made a speech on 20th November to confirm and underline all of the above. The government’s definition of inclusion? Set up more resource bases, and call it inclusion. What a shock.
We are travelling down a dark road at speed, but we cannot let the new government—the one we all hoped would put children first— crash the entire car with all our disabled children in it.
Also read:
- NAO: The Government has no clear SEND plan and should consider “whole-system reform” to incentivise
- What’s happening with the SEND & AP Change Programme— November 2024 update
- Too many children arrive in AP with no needs assessment—schools need to be more curious about the “why”
- How government-funded schools’ SEND training has young people’s experiences at its core.
- More “bold” reform for SEND and more children in mainstream—but how mainstream is it really?
- Kent’s beleaguered SEND leaders distort parent carer views with positive spin in DfE feedback
- Inside Surrey’s SEND Crisis: Case officers reveal the inner workings of a broken system
- Delivering better value in SEND? Much of a new review is based on deep and fatal flaws that may uproot the SEND system
- The Lords publishes a “blueprint” to help young disabled people “thrive in work” saying too many are “written off”
- A record rise in SEND appeals, and challenges for teachers accessing school support. Things are not getting better…
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Since then, Rachel has volunteered supporting local families through the EHCP and appeal process. She is passionate about the legal rights of disabled children and empowering parents to challenge unlawful decision making.
Rachel previously worked in publishing and international events before setting up her own business as an artist and tutor. For the last six years she has worked in co-production, predominantly within maternity and reproductive health, and strongly believes that SEND services should be designed alongside those accessing them.
Rachel founded local campaign group BCP Alliance for Children & Schools (www.BCPACS.uk) bringing together parents, education staff and unions to campaign against funding and service cuts within education. She also started the national Stop Safety Valve campaign
- Focusing on ADHD and autism diagnosis won’t cut costs and wastes money that should be spent on urgent support - December 9, 2025
- ADHD and Autism Right To Choose referrals paused as at least nine NHS areas tell providers to stop booking assessments - November 28, 2025
- Challenging SEND misinformation, one radio interview at a time - November 12, 2025
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