Measure What Matters is unwavering in its commitment to examining how democratic principles are upheld in practice—with a focus on representation, transparency, and accountability. This is what we were built to do.
We stand watch at the point where the state meets the public. And we will not hesitate to say, without equivocation, whether that social contract is being honoured—or not.
It is from that position—not as campaigners, or advocates, or experts in SEND, but as those who stand watch over the integrity of the political process itself—that we are making the following statement:
What we are witnessing in the development and presentation of the government’s SEND reforms represents, in our assessment, a serious assault on the standards that should govern the democratic process.
- The manipulation of the narrative
- The departure from the principles of integrity, objectivity, openness and honesty,
- The systematic management of dissent
- The misrepresentation of consent
Taken together, this is not simply poor process. It is conduct that raises profound ethical and constitutional concern. We will not stand by while the mechanisms designed to ensure fairness, representation, and genuine consensus are systematically circumvented.
This government is all in
The Government is all in. The political capital has been spent. These reforms must now be delivered. This is a government that cannot be seen to retreat.
The communications machine is now running at full capacity. A coordinated, publicly funded PR campaign publicly available on Contracts Finder is actively running across platforms. The contract brief references media plans, campaign reporting, and advertising technology platform reports. This is not organic government communication. It is a structured, 90 million pound taxpayer-funded media operation designed to shape public narrative of these reforms.
Its message is consistent and relentless. This is what you asked for. Built with you. For you.
The Ministers have their lines. The MPs have their briefings.
One thing is now abundantly clear. The substantive issues are locked down.
They are not here to listen. They are not here to amend
There is one plan. And they are calling it yours.
We know what is at stake as well as you do
Over the past year, Measure What Matters has built the largest published qualitative dataset documenting how families experience the SEND system in England. It amounts to thousands of pages of evidence. As widely reported, this includes detailed accounts of serious, systemic and prolonged maladministration by local authorities, with over 1 in 6 families describing how this process left their child suicidal.
We will not replay that evidence here. You lived it. You documented it. You submitted it. You can find our recent articles on SNJ about this at the end of this article. We have reviewed thousands of complaint records, serious safeguarding reviews, and, at worst, inquest bundles and Prevention of Future Death reports. We have analysed hundreds of data points to assess how, where and why these systems are failing.
We understand the stakes. We understand the problem, crucially, and we have heard your voices.
It is our assessment that—whatever the rhetoric—what is being presented as reform is not what parents asked for.
The record speaks for itself
Before the White Paper, there was an Education Select Committee Inquiry.
In September 2025, following nine months of cross-party inquiry—thousands of hours of evidence from families, professionals, lawyers, educators and charities—the Education Select Committee published its report, Solving the SEND Crisis. It was comprehensive. It was evidence-based. And on many of the issues that mattered most: legal rights, accountability, and enforcement, it was unambiguous. EHCPs and tribunal rights must be protected. Accountability must be strengthened. The problem was not the legal framework. It was the institutional failure to comply with it.
The White Paper that followed effectively set those findings aside.
But before the White Paper, there was a ‘National Conversation’.
In December 2025, the government announced what it called “the biggest national conversation on SEND in a generation.” Nine face-to-face events. Five online. A six-week window. Participants found that questions were limited to five principles already set by the Secretary of State. The most urgent issues families had raised consistently, were effectively written out of the ‘conversation’ before it began.
Those who attended described sessions where the agenda was tightly scripted, for online sessions, the panel was selected. Dissent was managed rather than heard. Comment sections remained closed. Concerns “recorded”.
And then, the White Paper arrived. None of this “conversation” was reflected.
SEND Crisis hidden in plain sight
Before the Schools White Paper, there was an emerging, existential crisis in education, hiding in plain sight.
50,000 children with EHCPs are now classified as “educated elsewhere”; a 22.5% increase in a single year, according to Special Needs Jungle’s analysis of DfE data. This figure is widely expected to significantly understate the true picture given known concerns about local authority data quality.
The vast majority of the 50,000 are not there by choice. Some are in formal EOTAS arrangements, but many are classified as not in education, employment or training, or simply unaccounted for — children for whom the system has failed to find or fund a suitable place. Many are at home, in crisis. Deteriorating.
What is most revealing is not the number itself. It is the complete absence of curiosity about it.
These children do not appear in the White Paper. Not as a crisis. Not as evidence of systemic failure. Not as a vulnerable cohort who will require specific provisions. Not even as a question worth asking. In fact, the only visible proposed response to children not in school is punitive; increased attendance targets and school attendance orders that ask not “why has this child been failed?” but “how do we return them to the system that failed them?”
This is not a government that has been listening. It is a government that has decided what it already knows.
Fifty-thousand children. Disappeared from the conversation entirely.
A shocking admission
Then finally, a confession…
Just last week—in what may come to define this entire process—the government’s response was published to the ongoing legal challenge against the consultation itself. One family and their legal representatives had identified a glaring omission: the role of the tribunal, one of the most consequential proposals in the entire reform, had not been included in the consultation. The government’s response was not to address this. It was to confirm that their decision had already been made.
In its response to the ‘Letter Before Action’ issued by Rook Irwin Sweeney it is confirmed that “…in relation to the matters you focus on, the Secretary of State has made decisions about them and thus has chosen not to consult on them” As Eduardo Reyes in the Law Gazette reported: “Plan to hobble SEND Tribunal — a done deal, government admits.”
“…In relation to the matters you focus on, the Secretary of State has made decisions about them and thus has chosen not to consult on them (hence there are no specific questions about them, and also why at page 21 it states “each section contains relevant consultation questions”).
From the Govermnent’s letter. A longer quote is in SNJ’s article last Friday
Not alleged. Not claimed. Admitted.
Presented as “the most ambitious listening exercise in a generation.” A partial consultation. And only on the elements the government was willing to discuss. Yet the most substantive decisions were already taken, without consultation, and without, at this stage, parliamentary scrutiny.
That is not consultation. It is, at best, window dressing. And we suspect that is a point the legal system will now need to pursue.
You’re right to feel powerless and angry
If you feel exhausted, confused and overwhelmed—that’s not weakness. It’s not a reflection of your capacity or your commitment. It is the predictable and measurable effect of engaging with a system that produces exactly that response.
You feel powerless. You feel unheard. You feel silenced. Yet many of you have done everything a functioning democracy could have asked of you.
You responded to the consultations. You filled in the questionnaires.
You attended the events. You submitted your evidence.
You wrote to your MPs. You engaged.
Repeatedly, and in good faith. You were told your voice would be heard.
It was not.
The Social Contract is broken
When participation is invited, but not honoured, the social contract between the state and those it exists to serve begins to fracture. The resulting disconnect is profound. Axis-shifting. And it marks the beginning of something far more serious than disillusionment:
A population that feels, justifiably, disenfranchised.
It is clear to us that what has been produced does not reflect your commitment, your experience, or your evidence. This week, an expensive, coordinated, media operation has moved in to *tell* you and the wider public, that these reforms were built “for you”, “with you”, grounded in “your lived experience” It is also clear to us that the distance between what you were promised and what you are being handed has never been greater.
There is a name for what is happening here.
It is called the manufacture of consent.
It is what happens when those in power do not discover public support — they construct it.
- They select who sits at the table.
- They define the terms of engagement.
- They write the script.
- They filter the evidence.
- They close the comments.
- They manage the narratives.
- They discipline dissent.
- And then, they point to the resulting silence…and call it consensus.
The Nolan Principles—the seven standards of public life every holder of public office is constitutionally bound to uphold—demand integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, and honesty. These are not aspirations. They are obligations.
In our assessment, the current process falls materially short of those standards. And yet the system moves on regardless. Counting on the fact that understanding what is happening to you and around you is not the same as knowing how to fight it
That is the gap we want to close
Silence is not neutrality. Not here. Not now.
“We realise the importance of our voices only when we are silenced.”
“When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful.”
Malala Yousafzai
One thing is certain. This system is moving. And right now, it is counting on your exhaustion.
Your silence in this moment will not be recorded as abstention. It will be recorded as consent.
If these reforms do not represent what you called for, if they do not reflect what you submitted, what you said, what you experienced — then that must be said.
Clearly. On the record. Directly. Wherever and whenever the claim is made that this is what you wanted.
Over and over again.
You don’t have to engage with every argument. You don’t have to fight on every front. You don’t even have to agree on your specific points of concern. You may be a child, a parent, a teacher, a professional. Your views on the details will differ. That is right and proper.
But on this — you can stand together: You cannot allow your silence to become their evidence.
“Not in my name.” These are not casual words.
“Not in my name” carries specific democratic weight. These words appear at moments when a government has not merely made the wrong decision, but has claimed your consent while doing so. They are not a phrase of complaint. They are a phrase of correction. A statement that the record must show: this was not sanctioned. This was not asked for.
In the context of the Schools White Paper’s SEND proposals, they are a powerful tool of rejection. Not of the content— but of the motive behind it. Not of the proposals, but of a political process that claims to deliver them in your name.
A rejection of a process that has left hundreds of thousands of young people, parents and carers, educators, professionals, voluntary workers, and lawyers all stunned. Watching a government claim, with a straight face, that what it has produced was built “with them”. “For them”.
It was not.
So when you choose to say these words — you are saying something precise and constitutionally serious.
You do not have my consent. This is not my voice. I have not been heard.
“Not in my name” is what you say when a government has not merely got it wrong, but has dressed its failure in your clothes, spoken in your voice, and called it your choice.
It belongs to anyone who has been spoken for without being heard. It is the clearest, universal, powerful statement available to any citizen who feels misrepresented by the state. A unifying cry of dissent for the disenfranchised.
The very fact it is necessary in the UK in 2026, in one of the oldest democracies in the world, is a profound and shocking indictment of what is happening here.
So wherever a minister claims these reforms represent your voice: respond.
Wherever an MP posts that this is what their constituents asked for: respond.
Wherever a briefing, an interview, a press release claims that families and professionals support this: respond.
Simply. Consistently. Wherever the claim appears. Many of you have been, more need to join them
Not in my name.
What you can do.
- Write to your MP — publicly, on record. They have no mandate to say these reforms are for you unless you have said so yourself. Whether you are a child, a parent, a teacher, a professional – they do not have your consent to misrepresent your view. IPSEA’s new MP template is here
- Respond to the consultation before 18th May. If the questions don’t ask what you need to say, say it anyway. The gap between what they asked and what you needed to say is itself evidence. SNJ’s support for this is here.
- Continue to add your voice to our national testimony database. Thousands of families have already done so. Every testimony strengthens a record that cannot be managed, filtered, or switched off.
- If you can, participate in the Save Our Children’s Rights protest, when it is fully announced
Make your dissent visible. Clear. Dignified. Simple. But unwavering.
Because the only answer to manufactured consent is real voices. On record. Undeniable. Impossible to switch off.
#NotInMyName
Measure What Matters is an independent public interest initiative examining transparency, accountability and statutory compliance across local government and public services. Uncover. Inform. Empower. measurewhatmatters.co.uk
- The toxic culture of obstruction that’s taken root inside England’s council SEND services is not only unchecked, it’s encouraged
- Not in our name: How manufacturing consent for proposed SEND reforms has broken the social contract.
- Part 2: The Testimonies. Children died; the system looked away. Will government SEND reforms make this scandal even worse?
- Children died. The system looked away. Today, the Government is calling the human cost of cutting rights, “reform” [Part 1]
- MP says the abuse of SEND law is a “systemic, moral and ethical crisis” and schools must speak up
- The missing evidence of systemic maladministration in SEND—Teachers speak out Educators, share your experiences!
Disabled Children’s Rights are Under Attack.
We’re fighting, but we can’t do it alone: we need your help more than ever.
We’re volunteer-run, but costs are rising. To help us keep going, please consider a one-off or, if it’s possible, a regular donation.
Read more about being a regular donor here.
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Also read:
- Beyond EHCPs: Why Inclusion Needs More Than a Document
- The Unacceptable Truth: 20 SEND legal rights at risk from the Government’s SEND reforms
- How health and family support systems are failing children starting school
- WEBINAR RECORDING! The implications for children’s legal rights to EHCPs and EOTAS of the Government’s SEND proposals
- When things go right: Shining a light on SEND Practitioners making a positive impact [Giveaway!]
- From suspicion to support: why the Government’s child protection reforms matter for disabled children
- Have your say on the future of transport for disabled children and young people
- Unison voices major concerns over SEND reform health plans for sick and disabled children out of school in the EOTAS consultation
- Top Tips for the EOTAS & EHCP consultation: Protect your child’s rights to statutory SEND support
- 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”
What kind of government is “bold” enough to scrap statutory EHCPs from vulnerable children?May 16, 2025
The SEND reforms in the Schools White Paper reveal rights given, and rights stripped awayFebruary 24, 2026
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- The toxic culture of obstruction that’s taken root inside England’s council SEND services is not only unchecked, it’s encouraged - July 3, 2026
- Not in our name: How manufacturing consent for proposed SEND reforms has broken the social contract. - March 23, 2026
- Part 2: The Testimonies. Children died; the system looked away. Will government SEND reforms make this scandal even worse? - February 23, 2026
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