DfE must give its SEND reform Child Rights Impact Assessment a do-over; this time, without marking its own homework

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The DfE published a Child Rights Impact Assessment on the same day as its Schools White Paper and SEND proposals. It’s something we should have examined earlier, but there is a limit to what a volunteer team can manage, and we’ve been running at top speed and on empty for many months. If you’d like to help us become paid and keep going, you know where the donate button is.

The DfE congratulated itself for carrying out this Child Rights Impact Assessment (CRIA) because it wasn’t a statutory requirement. It looked at its own proposals, set them against the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and came up winning, despite the 20 rights that will be reduced or just plain scrapped.

And what a result it awarded itself.

Across the cumulative tables, every assessed impact on children’s rights is rated either “Positive” or “Neutral”. There wasn’t a single negative rating — including for changes to EHCPs, parental preference, Specialist Provision Packages and the resolution and legal framework. That was, at best, wildly overoptimistic. Because just a few pages earlier, right at the start, it admitted something pretty important:

“there remain evidence gaps and areas of uncertainty regarding implementation, behavioural response and longer-term impacts on children, young people and families.”

It adds that DfE is committed to “strengthening the evidence base over time”

Over time?

These are proposals to make far-reaching changes to statutory rights, EHCP eligibility, the provision children can enforce, parental preference and access to the SEND Tribunal. The document was published with the SEND proposals last February, but although there has been a lot of talking since, we have still not seen a definitive defence of the rights-bashing proposals. We know now how premature the SEND consultation was, given what it left out. But what must not happen is the publication of any prospective Bill while,

the evidence base is still in development, and
while there is no up-to-date Rights impact for something that has such serious consequences for disabled children, young people and their families.

Anything less is a clear sign that these reforms are nothing whatsoever to do with improving SEND learners’ outcomes, and everything to do with cost control.

What does “behavioural response” mean?

Cast your mind back a few paragraphs to what may be the most revealing phrase in the entire assessment. “Behavioural responses” does not, I assume, refer to children’s behaviour, but how adults and organisations change their behaviour when the rules and incentives change—including in ways the Department did not intend (if you were involved in SEND during the 2014 reforms, this will seem very familiar).

For example, how will schools behave when more responsibility and risk sit with them? Will local authorities interpret the new statutory assessment or Specialist Provision Package thresholds restrictively? Will parents change when and how they seek assessments or challenge decisions? Will providers leave parts of the market? Will funding incentives change how councils commission support? As probable futures go, I think we know the answers to all of these questions.

So, in other words, the DfE acknowledges that changing the architecture of the SEND system may change the behaviour of the organisations operating within it—and that it doesn’t yet know exactly how. And that’s before AI takes over…

It’s a particularly significant issue in a system where culture and unlawful practice are already major problems. If councils have spent years rationing provision, delaying assessments and defending indefensible decisions at Tribunal, it is hardly unreasonable to ask what they will do when given different thresholds, different incentives, and fewer individually enforceable requirements. Expecting them to suddenly become the benign figures of the 1970s—as previously described by Baroness Warnock—is wishful thinking. It’s probably even too much to expect them to stick to deadlines and quit it with the gaslighting.

Intended benefits are not evidence of actual impact

One of the central problems with this assessment is that it repeatedly treats the Government’s intended outcome as evidence of a positive rights impact. The reforms are intended to make mainstream support better, so the assessment assumes children will benefit from better mainstream support. The reforms are intended to resolve disputes earlier, so reduced Tribunal rights are treated as less problematic because mediation and complaints procedures are expected to work better. The reforms are intended to produce greater consistency, so nationally defined Specialist Provision Packages are treated positively.

But these are policy intentions, not demonstrated outcomes and a Rights assessment should treat them as such. The problem is particularly obvious with Specialist Provision Packages. The Government itself describes the published packages as an initial, indicative list that is likely to change and says further packages may be needed to capture the full range of complex needs. Nevertheless, the Child Rights Impact Assessment awards SPPs positive ratings across most of the relevant UNCRC rights. How can DfE confidently assess the rights impact of a system whose critical components are still being designed?

What happens when the assumptions fail?

A proper impact assessment should surely ask not only what happens if the policy works perfectly, but what happens if it doesn’t.

What happens to a child who would currently qualify for individually specified and enforceable provision in an EHCP but does not meet the future threshold for an SPP? What happens if mainstream schools cannot provide the promised support? What happens if Experts at Hand is oversubscribed or unavailable? What happens if a child’s needs do not fit neatly into nationally defined packages? And what happens when detailed provision is changed at school level and the parent no longer has the same right to appeal the precise special educational provision their child requires?

The Tribunal section illustrates this neatly. The DfE accepts that changes to appeal routes may have negative impacts, but says these are expected to be mitigated by better mainstream support, mediation, and disagreement resolution. “Mitigation” depends on other parts of the new system working successfully, and we have plenty of evidence that it won’t. Like the scorpion and the frog, LAs just can’t help themselves. Even when they get what they want, they won’t be able to resist sabotaging families—and themselves in the process.

In a nutshell, you cannot use one untested reform as proof that the risks created by another untested reform will be safely managed.

Government’s own guidance says uncertainty should be tested

I’m not saying government can never act until every possible consequence is known. No policy could meet that standard and we’d never achieve anything. But the Government’s own Magenta Book—guidance on what to consider when designing an evaluation—says evaluation should examine assumptions, risks and uncertainties before implementation, including whether an intervention can be piloted and tested. It specifically says pilots can test design, implementation, and outcomes on a smaller scale before wider roll-out. This is what the 2022 SEND Improvement Plan was doing, but some of the things it discarded, such as Tailored Lists, somehow have found their way into the SEND proposals. And of course, it has still only had an interim evaluation.

The Magenta Book’s newer Test and Learn guidance goes further: when behavioural responses and delivery conditions are uncertain, early testing is intended to identify wrong assumptions before they become expensive or damaging at scale. This is relevant here; when rights and routes of legal redress are being changed, finding out afterwards that assumptions were wrong means children will already have lost education, support and opportunities they can never get back.

And then came EOTAS

There is another very obvious reason this assessment needs to be redone. The CRIA says explicitly that it reflects the policy as it stood at the time and that it is provisional. On page 46, the DfE acknowledges it has had to make “estimates and assumptions” and says the assessment will continue to be updated as policy develops.

Since then, the separate EOTAS consultation, dealing with children whose EHCP (or s19 support) provides for education otherwise than at school, children unable to attend because of health needs and other arrangements outside ordinary school attendance. With it came more detailed proposals of great importance to all EHCPs, not just EOTAS. We did our best but we know that thousands will have missed their chance to comment on plans of great relevance to their children and young people.

So the February 2026 Child Rights Impact Assessment cannot possibly constitute a complete assessment of the reforms as we now understand them. It assessed the February package, before further proposals with potentially significant implications for EHCPs, placement and provision were published.

Promoted

DfE must not mark its own homework twice

The child rights assessment concludes:

“Overall, the assessment indicates that the reforms, when taken together, are expected to support greater inclusion, fairness, and transparency across the SEND system, while retaining appropriate safeguards and routes to redress.”

Given the gaps the DfE itself acknowledges, the subsequent EOTAS proposals, and the extent of the existing rights being altered, that conclusion deserves considerably more independent scrutiny. There is now a clear case for a new Child Rights Impact Assessment covering the full package of reforms as they currently stand. And this time, DfE should not assess itself.

Here is a challenge: The DfE should commission an external, genuinely independent child-rights expert or organisation. The assessment should examine:

what children have under the current law,
what they would have under the proposed system,
which protections are being reduced or removed,
which children are most exposed if the reforms do not work as planned, and
whether the proposed mitigations are evidence-based or merely hoped-for.

Then we might get a clearer picture of the true impact of these reforms—and just how fair and transparent they really are. If they don’t do this, that says just as much, doesn’t it? What are they afraid of?

Haven’t we all had enough?

To be fair, there was much pressure on the Government to act, so the initial rush before the pause after the SEND Debate in September 2025, was almost understandable. Leaking proposals to test the waters and advisors misspeaking? Not so much.

Neither was it understandable when it became apparent that Labour had entered Government with no SEND plan, despite this being the biggest proportion of their caseload MPs have. What has happened overall has been almost unforgivable. Already overwhelmed parents have spent the last year-and-a-half in a panic at the thought of losing rights. We’re already two SEND ministers and two Education secretaries in, in just two years.

What they should do now is put their big girl pants on and take a breath until after Christmas to give them time to digest all the consultations together. Put our claims of rights loss to the test with a new Child Rights Impact Assessment, before you really break something that cannot be fixed. We know you want to make things better, but if you get it wrong through hubris, you really won’t be forgiven.

Stop thinking you’re driving an unstoppable train, and apply the brakes. Take time to listen and fully digest what you are being told. Have some humility, and you may win back some of the faith you have squandered.

Personally, it’s 21 years since my youngest was diagnosed and our SEND journey began. This is the worst I have ever known it. Parents feel hopeless, angry, despairing, all because of what you are doing. We, at SNJ, feel it in other ways too. Previous DfE administrations knew why we were here; they understood the role we play, and they valued our experience and respected us, even though we could write things that were difficult to take. I don’t feel that now, and I’m not sure why I’m still bothering. I’m 60 next year, and I’ve had about as much as I can take of this. We hoped this Government would listen and stand up for families, not let the councils who’ve caused anguish, misery, and even death get away with it with no consequences. Georgia Gould, Lucy Powell, Andy Burnham, show us this is not who you are.

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About
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Tania Tirraoro

Founder, Co-Director at Special Needs Jungle

Founder & co-director of Special Needs Jungle. (She/Her) Autistic parent of two young autistic adults Devoted Grandma. National SEND advisor, journalist & author. Tania also runs a PR, web & social media consultancy, SocialOro Media.
She is a rare disease & chronic pain patient advocate with Ehlers Danlos syndrome.

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