Deep in the deserts of Turkmenistan, there’s a toxic fire that’s been burning for decades. It’s known locally as the Door to Hell. Inadvertently started by unaccountable government apparatchiks, exacerbated by incompetent specialists, the Door to Hell has defied every effort to put it out.
Local bureaucrats initially denied the Door to Hell existed. Once it became literally visible from space, the same bureaucrats then blamed everyone else for its existence and persistence. The Door to Hell’s effects have repeatedly ruined, and sometimes destroyed, the lives of the people who live around it. But once the Door to Hell’s pollution looked set to damage other things that the Turkmen government valued, they began to take the problem more seriously. In 2022, Turkmenistan set out its intention to bring the Door To Hell under control. These plans haven’t turned into reality yet, and no-one knows when they will.
This brings us seamlessly to the Public Accounts Committee’s latest inquiry report into the English special educational needs and disability system, which has been published today. In a letter to the Departments of Education and Health and Social Care, the Committee chair says SEND failings, “threaten to create a lost generation of children leaving school without having received the help they need to reach their potential. it, so creating inequalities.”
What is the background to today’s report?
It’s hard to keep track of all the SEND inquiries that have happened over the last few years, so this is the background to today’s report:
- The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is made up of 16 MPs from the House of Commons. It scrutinises government policy and spending, to ensure that it is delivering value for money for the taxpayer.
- The PAC is not part of government. It has no direct power to make changes to the SEND system. But the Committee is one of the most powerful ways that Parliament can put government under scrutiny.
- The PAC last did an inquiry into SEND in 2019. Membership of the PAC changes, so these aren’t the same MPs who conducted the 2019 inquiry.
- The PAC works very closely with the National Audit Office (NAO). The NAO investigated the SEND system in summer 2024, and it issued a damning report in October.
You can read the NAO report here, or a shorter SNJ summary of it here. But in a sentence, the NAO report said that the English SEND system wasn’t delivering for the children and young people it supported, it wasn’t delivering for the taxpayer, and that wide-ranging reform was urgently needed before the system’s financial contagion spread.
With the NAO report in their back pockets, the Public Accounts Committee then launched their SEND inquiry – this is their normal procedure. They called for evidence from other people, but they only took oral evidence from senior civil servants at the Department for Education (DfE) and Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC). Unlike previous SEND inquiries, the PAC did not take oral evidence from parent carers this time.
The PAC’s oral evidence session with DfE and DHSC officials took place in November – you can find a transcript of it online here, and a withering SNJ summary of it here.
Previous incarnations of the PAC, particularly under Dame Meg Hillier, have intensely and mercilessly grilled Whitehall officials over SEND. At times though, the November session looked more like rookie chefs running a sputtering Bic lighter along a frozen cylinder of rancid kebab meat.
So what does the PAC inquiry report say?
Key findings of the PAC SEND report
“SEN support has the potential, through the dedication of teachers and other specialists working with families, to help some of the most vulnerable children reach their full potential. However, my Committee’s inquiry found a system in disarray. Mired in red tape, lacking funding, and failing to produce value for money, overall, it is failing to provide the appropriate levels of support.
Letter from Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP, Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts to the DfE and DHSC
“These failings will inevitably undermine parents’ confidence in the system and threaten to create a lost generation of children leaving school without having received the help they need to reach their potential. it, so creating inequalities.
“Accessing SEN support should be a straightforward process for all parents and carers: instead, we found that it is an often chaotic and adversarial system that disadvantaged those less able to navigate Education, Health and Care (EHC) plans can be a vital passport to access SEN support, so the significant geographical variation in the number of EHC plans that are produced within the statutory 20 week period is concerning. Rates of 80% and 90% should be considered inadequate given the uncertainty and anxiety that delays can create for families. However, some local authorities failed to produce a single EHC within the statutory timeframe during 2023.”
The Public Accounts Committee report drew out seven key findings, and seven linked recommendations to repair the SEND system. None of their findings will come as any surprise to anyone already knee-deep in the SEND world. Past precedent suggests that none of the PAC’s recommendations will be implemented by government any time soon.
The PAC concludes that “the SEN system is inconsistent, inequitable, and not delivering in line with expectations, which inevitably undermines parents’ confidence in it.” As evidence for this, the PAC cite delays to EHCPs and SEND tribunal outcomes, and post-code lottery effects that mean SEN support is uneven across schools and local authorities.
The Committee believes the SEND Tribunal process is unfair, claiming it inherently favours families who are better able to navigate the system. The PAC’s MPs want the Department for Education to explore this further. During the November oral evidence session many PAC members stated they are current or ex-local government members. So it’s likely many of them believe the real problem here is something other than the purposeful home-brewed complexity and delay added to the system by LAs.
Recommendation 1
Within the next six months, the Department must work with the DHSC to better understand the reasons for increasing and changed demand for SEN support, and then set out how it will provide support more efficiently, such as through group support, identifying needs earlier and ensuring special schools reflect value for money
- The PAC recommends the DfE should work with others over the next year to better understand why SEN support is so variable geographically, to share good practice from better-performing areas, and to analyse SEND Tribunal outcomes. The DfE can straightforwardly say that for the most part, it’s already doing that.
- Next, the PAC says the Department for Education can’t provide value for money for the taxpayer until it fully understands why demand for SEN support has increased. It says within the next six months, the DfE must work closer with the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to better understand what is driving “demand” and then set out how it will provide support more efficiently. Again, both the DfE and DHSC will be able to point to several areas where they are already doing this work.
Recommendation 2
The Department should, within the next six months, set out the provision which children with SEN support should expect. Alongside this, they should set out what inclusive education means and looks like, and the level of resourcing both to ensure the support for children with SEN and the maintenance of educational provision for other children in the same setting. The Department should also set out how inclusive education will be achieved including through earlier identification of SEN, and improved teacher training and continuous development, and how schools will be held to account. SEN performance data should incorporate factors other than academic attainment.
There’s a basic problem with some of this – what does value for money look like in the world of SEND? You won’t find an answer (or even the beginnings of a theory of success) in the PAC inquiry report.
- The PAC wants the DfE to explain how it will evaluate the cost-effectiveness of special schools. Fine. Against what criteria? What, exactly, does the Committee, the government and the taxpayer consider to be value here? What price are we all willing to pay to give children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities a decent shot at a dignified and/or productive life?
“The PAC wants the DfE to explain how it will evaluate the cost-effectiveness of special schools… Against what criteria?…What price are we all willing to pay to give children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities a decent shot at a dignified and/or productive life?”
Inclusion and Health
The Public Accounts Committee is on firmer ground when it outlines a third issue with SEN support – the problem of inclusion.
- The Committee says the DfE hasn’t defined or set out what inclusive education should look like, and that it doesn’t have a defined process or specific funding to make its vision of inclusive education happen.
It recommends within the next six months, the DfE should set out, “the provision which children with SEN support should expect.” It’s not clear whether the PAC mean ‘SEN support’ in its broadest sense, or whether they are using it in a narrower technical sense (ie, school pupils with SEN who don’t have an Education, Health and Care Plan).
The PAC also wants the DfE to set out, “what inclusive education means and looks like, and the level of resourcing both to ensure the support for children with SEN and the maintenance of educational provision for other children in the same setting.”
DfE civil servants and their emotional support consultants were already working on a lot of this through the previous government’s SEND and Alternative Provision Change Programme. It’s unclear whether they still are, although that work was supposed to start delivering national standards and definitions of Ordinary Available Provision at the end of this year.
Accurately, the PAC also states, “accessing health expertise presents a significant barrier to identifying and supporting SEN needs [sic].” It points out (from the NAO report) only two of the NHS’s 32 key national objectives relate to SEN. The report points to the lack of data the Department of Health and Social Care has on workforce development.
The Committee recommends within the next six months, the DHSC should provide more detail on how the NHS manages its competing priorities, how its longer-term workforce plan will meet shortfalls, and how it plans to reduce SEN-related waiting lists.
Recommendation 3
Within six months, DHSC should set out how ICBs will consider SEN alongside wider priorities; how its longer-term workforce plans will address current and forecast SEN skill shortfalls; and its processes, plans and targets for reducing related waiting lists.
SEND Financial matters
The Public Accounts Committee and the National Audit Office are bodies that do what it says on their tin. So they are very focused on the financial aspect of SEND. Both are acutely concerned about the costs of the SEND system, and the potential impact of those costs on local authority finances.
The PAC says (with barely disguised horror) that “[DfE] witnesses could not provide any potential solution to the critical and immediate financial challenges facing many local authorities due to persistent and significant SEN-related overspends.”
Recommendation 4
Given the risks to local authorities’ finances, central government must urgently involve local authorities in conversations to develop a fair and appropriate solution for when the statutory override ends in March 2026, clearly setting out these plans as a matter of urgency and no later than March 2025.
It says within the next two months, central government must act urgently to involve local authorities in conversations to develop “a fair and appropriate solution” to the problem of education funding deficits. In particular, what happens when an accounting fudge, the statutory override, that currently keeps these deficits off councils’ books ends in March 2026.
The PAC also looked at the effectiveness of the DfE’s main SEND financial intervention schemes, including Safety Valve and Delivering Better Value. The Committee concludes that “these [schemes] do not include all local authorities and will not deliver enough savings, merely acting as a short-term sticking plaster.”
The report says the DfE “must provide specific support and guidance so that all local authorities can effectively manage their SEN-related spending sustainably in the longer-term.” Again, the DfE can respond by saying that it already does this.
The PAC also recommends that the DfE and LAs should conduct demand forecasting for mainstream and specialist placements.” Once again, this is something that they already do.
Recommendation 5
Moving on from its ‘Safety Valve’ programme, the Department must provide specific support and guidance so all local authorities can effectively manage their SEN-related spending sustainably in the longer term. To ensure investment allocation decisions maximise value for money, demand forecasting is vital.
This joint work by the Departmentand local authorities should include differentiating between the number of places to be provided in mainstream and specialist state settings. It should also ensure that any spending on independent schools and transport costs reflects value for money. The Department should work with local authorities to identify ways in which more accountable provision could be developed offering better value for money
A dearth of data
- The Public Accounts Committee’s seventh, and final point is the Department for Education doesn’t have enough data, targets or plans in place to reform the system effectively. It says, “…the Department has a long way to go to build data across a range of areas, such as on SEN mainstream schools places, home-to-school transport, and whole system costs.”
There’s some truth in that. The SEND & AP Change Programme was supposed to have ‘inclusion dashboards’ in place over a year ago. They’re nowhere to be seen.
But we’re back to our fundamental problem here. Organisations will only measure what they value. It’s over 10 years since the 2014 Children and Families Act, over five years since the last government’s SEND Review, and over six months since the new government took power. And still, no one outside the magic circle knows what top-level decision-makers actually value when it comes to SEND.
Recommendation 6
The Department should urgently improve its data, and then use this information to develop a new fully costed plan for improving the SEN system, with concrete actions, and clear interdependencies, alongside metrics to measure outcomes.
The PAC wants the Department for Education to “urgently improve its data,” whatever that means: does it mean more granular data, more timely data, more relevant data, data that’s better deployed, or what?
It also wants to see a “fully costed plan for improving the SEN system, with concrete actions, and clear interdependencies, alongside metrics to measure outcomes,” but the report has no advice to offer on what those things might be.
So what’s the point of the report?
The PAC inquiry report is one of a multitude of SEND inquiries to have taken place over the last few years. It might be unfair to criticise this report for not unearthing any new understanding of the problems in the SEND system. But the report’s recommendations for action aren’t particularly specific. In most cases, it will be trivially easy for the Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care to point to things they’re already doing as evidence of progress.
It’s also remarkable to have conducted an inquiry into problems with today’s SEND system without tackling social care, post-16 provision, alternative provision or home education in any depth, but this committee has managed it.
To ram this point home yet again, it’s hard to see how you can write a report about the SEND system’s “value for money” without telling the reader what you think that “value” means.
All the same, you get an indirect glimmer of what the authors of this report value about SEND by looking a) at how they phrase their recommendations, and b) what they don’t wring their hands over.
If you’re a regular reader of the SEND Code of Practice, you’ll be familiar with the difference between what organisations must do, and what they should do.
In the PAC SEND inquiry report, there are three recommendations where the authors say the government must do things. The rest are recommendations where the government should do things. That gives us some insight into what the committee values most.
Two of the three ‘must’ recommendations are about finance; about the impact of the SEND system on the rest of the government. The other is about “demand management”.
In short, all of the “must do” recommendations are about how to stop the SEND system hurting other things: Things That Matter More.
All of the recommendations about how to stop the SEND system from damaging the lives and life chances of children and young people are only “should do” actions.
The report bangs on about the inequity in the SEND Tribunal appeals process. It says nothing whatsoever about the resource inequity in Tribunals between all parent carer appellants and all local authority respondents. Bafflingly, for a report focused on value for money, it says nothing whatsoever about the £600m+ of publicly-funded resource LAs have squandered on indefensible SEND Tribunal appeals defence over the last decade.
If you were hoping this report would extinguish the toxic decades-long SEND conflagration then you’ll probably need to look elsewhere. The Door to Hell will remain visible from space for a while longer yet.
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Also read:
- Solving the SEND crisis? The Education Committee seeks the answer to everything in (another) “major” inquiry
- Disabled children are not widgets. Removing rights isn’t the answer to the SEND crisis
- Commons committee lets the Department for Education off the hook—so we’ll do the scrutiny instead
- The Ombudsman wants to investigate complaints about schools: Will the government listen?
- Ordinarily Available Provision for SEND: Friend or Foe? Part 1 from Philippa Stobbs OBE
- How government-funded schools’ SEND training has young people’s experiences at its core.
- Ofsted Area SEND Inspections: How bad does a council have to be to fail?
- Updated exclusions and behaviour guidance and how a thoughtful school culture can avoid discriminating against learners with SEND
- What’s happening with the SEND & AP Change Programme— November 2024 update
- More “bold” reform for SEND and more children in mainstream—but how mainstream is it really?
- Uncovering the origin of the evil EHCP ‘Golden Ticket’ Narrative
- Better co-production is crucial for improving SEND provision. But are the Government’s plans a case of magical thinking?
- Delivering better value in SEND? Much of a new review is based on deep and fatal flaws that may uproot the SEND system
A council's "improvement journey"? How determined SEND parents catalogued the trail of their LA’s unlawful behaviourSeptember 29, 2026
Oops, we did it again… The Government must now listen to more than 100,000 people who do not want to lose SEND rightsOctober 1, 2026
Could using AI to filter Government consultation responses lead to “algorithmic silencing” of neurodivergent voices?September 30, 2026
The Unacceptable Truth: 20 SEND legal rights at risk from the Government’s SEND reformsSeptember 9, 2026
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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.
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- Mainstream SEND Funding: A simple explainer, another consultation, and why it really matters - July 22, 2026
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