National Education Union’s Daniel Kebede: “Reforming SEND cannot be done on the cheap”

By Daniel Kebede, General Secretary, National Education Union

Contents

The countdown to the White Paper is in its final phase. Continuous leaks have turned it into a macabre circus so families are traumatised before it’s even clear what’s in it. You can read our thoughts and plans here.

Today on SNJ, we hear from our Save Our Children’s Rights partners, The National Education Union. Its General Secretary, Daniel Kebede, has written this article for us (before the leak this week).*

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The crisis facing children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities has been years in the making. It is the direct result of political decisions that have removed resources, weakened local systems and left schools to cope with demands they were never funded to meet. Families have lived with this reality for a long time. Educators have lived with it too. And the government can no longer look away.

Since 2015, the number of Education, Health and Care Plans has risen from 240,000 to 640,000. Yet outcomes for children with SEND have not improved. The Department for Education admits this. Behind every one of those numbers is a child whose learning, wellbeing and development depend on timely and properly resourced support. But the current system cannot deliver it.

Teachers at the sharp end

High-needs allocations have more than doubled in the past decade, yet they still fall well short of what is required. Identified need has also more than doubled before inflation is taken into account. The Government has promised to write off 90% of local authority deficits that were projected to reach £5 billion by March 2026. Many are already rationing services because they have no other choice. Teachers see the effects every day: stretched staff, growing waiting lists and children whose needs remain unmet for months or even years.

Only one in ten teachers say they have proper access to specialist support. That is not a functioning system; it is a warning siren. Class teachers are doing everything they can—often working late into the evening, often at personal cost—but no amount of goodwill can replace specialists, therapeutic services or properly staffed support teams.

Families know this too. Half of all children with an EHCP waited more than 20 weeks for a decision last year. In a third of local areas, Ofsted and the CQC identified widespread failings. These failings are not the fault of hardworking local teams. They are the result of a system past breaking point.

Promoted

NEU welcomes reform—rooted in rights

As General Secretary of the NEU, I welcome any reform rooted in children’s rights, inclusion and fairness. But I am deeply concerned that the government’s plans rest on shaky financial ground. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, the gap between what councils spend on SEND and what the government allocates was set to reach £6.3 billion within three years, with £14 billion of accumulated debt. Despite a debt write-off, without new schools’ funding, these numbers will not disappear—they will land on the desks of schools already running on empty.

Mainstream schools need strengthening, not hollowing out. If we want them to be genuinely inclusive, they must have the resources to be inclusive. That means more specialists working directly in schools, rapid access to educational psychologists and therapists, strong partnerships with special schools, and fair admissions set locally to stop the clustering of pupils with the greatest needs.

Real terms funding is what counts

Reform cannot be achieved while mainstream budgets fall in real terms. Nor can it succeed without what the Institute for Fiscal Studies calls “double funding”: investing in new support while maintaining provision for those already in the system. Anything less risks forcing schools to divert money from classroom teaching to patch up wider failures. No responsible government should place schools or children in that position.

SEND reform is not a cost to minimise. It is an investment in childhood. The children whose needs go unmet today do not get those years back. Teachers and leaders want this crisis to end. Families want this crisis to end. A different set of political choices can end it.

It is time to fund inclusion properly. It is time to put children—and children’s rights—first.

*The views in this article are those of the National Education Union, and not necessarily endorsed by Special Needs Jungle

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Special Needs Jungle was founded in 2008 as a personal SEN blog by Tania Tirraoro. It is now a multi-author, award-winning site covering special needs, disability, mental health and rare conditions in children & young people birth-25 years.

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