Last month, we started to examine some of the written evidence submitted to the House of Commons Education Select Committee (ESC) SEND inquiry. We’re looking primarily at what big institutions have said as these are the voices likely to have most clout with the government as they set about reforming the SEND system.
We’re not doing this to privilege their voices or because we endorse their evidence—far from it. We’re doing it so parent carers have a clear idea how powerful groups are trying to use their influence to reshape the future SEND landscape—and how, too often, it’s not by putting disabled children first.
We kicked off with a look at the evidence that local authorities submitted to the ESC SEND inquiry, and we didn’t like much of what we read. This week, we’re taking a look at what the trade unions have submitted.
The Education Select Committee is publishing a lot of the written evidence that they’ve received for their SEND inquiry. You can read what they’ve published so far here.
Trade Unions and the SEND workforce
Unsurprisingly, most of the trade unions who have submitted written evidence to this inquiry represent the education workforce. They include the following:
- School Leadership Unions: These are the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), with around 25,000 members, and the 38,000-strong National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT)
- Teacher Unions: The two main organisations here are the National Education Union (NEU), with around half a million members, and the National Association of Schoolmasters / Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT), which has roughly 300,000 members. These two unions represent most of the classroom teaching workforce.
- Support Staff Unions: There are several unions here, but at the time of writing, only one union, the General and Municipal Workers’ Union (GMB) has had its evidence to the SEND inquiry published. These unions represent school and college support staff and some local authority employees. Roughly 100,000 of GMB’s 560,000 members are support staff, mostly teaching assistants.
- At the time of writing, we haven’t seen evidence from UNISON, a trade union that represents many teaching assistants, as well as workers in local government and health services. It’s highly likely they’ve submitted evidence, though.
What school leaders’ unions want: ACSL
Both of the school and college leadership unions want the SEND system to change. The Association of School and College Leaders wants to see a radical change in mindset and approach; the NAHT less so.
The ASCL’s evidence submission states pretty clearly that things cannot continue as they are and that short-term efforts to stabilise the SEND system have become part of the problem. Their solutions to the SEND crisis would require radical change to most of the wider educational landscape:
“…[the] most significant step the government could take is to go far beyond the inequitable experiences of the SEND paradigm in looking for a ‘fix’ to a poorly designed and inequitably calibrated education system.”
ASCL argues that the wider education system is a big part of the problem. It claims government policies and educational research have treated pupils with SEND as an afterthought, that definitions of success are too narrow and a fairer, more equitable education system is needed:
“ASCL defines inclusion as a process not an event. It is the mechanism, the journey of improvement, through which schools can achieve the equitable outcomes or ‘end state’ we seek for young people: achievement, happiness, personal success, fairness, connection and belonging.”
ACSL
“…diversity is a reality, we must make a conscious choice to design equitable policies, we take inclusive action through a progressive process of improvement and believe that belonging is the desired outcome.”
For the ASCL, that means embracing the diversity of learners as a strength, with “overlapping, co-occurring needs to be embraced as expected.” It says approaches that don’t see inclusion and high standards as competing priorities would include a more accessible curriculum, more flexible progression routes through education, and a wider range of assessment methods.
The Association of School and College Leaders wants to see the basic principles of SEND support shifted. It wants less emphasis on labelling pupils and more emphasis on meeting individual needs, designing learning environments that enable early intervention from the start. Cultures should be developed where inclusion happens throughout a school rather than something that’s applied as a bolt-on. That would need better training on SEND for leaders, and much more SEND content in initial teacher training (ITT) and ongoing professional development.
The ACSL also says it wants to see better joint working, including with parents in the design and implementation of SEND support strategies, and stronger connections between academic research and classroom practice. Additionally, it also wants to see some short-term actions to stabilise the SEND system:
- wider access to SENCO training,
- a review of funding distribution mechanisms, and
- writing off local authority deficits to enable front-line reinvestment.
This is heady stuff, and much of it would require both central government, local government, and individual schools to work very differently. Very little of this would require the law to change, but most of it would require a radical change to mindsets and working cultures; the sort of thing that was supposed to happen after 2014 with the Children and Families Act, but didn’t.
It’s probably also fair to say that there are people within the education sector – mostly men who think they’re a big deal on social media – who would sooner feed their bollocks slowly into a wood-chipper than work this way.
What school leaders’ unions want: NAHT
The evidence submission from the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) is more focused on the here and now. It cautiously welcomes the new government’s interest in inclusion, but wants to know more:
“An articulated vision of ‘inclusion’ is needed to illustrate what this will mean in practice across the whole system, not just for early years or mainstream settings – specialist settings must be part of an inclusive offer to pupils. Different pupils need different environments – both in size (numbers on roll) and school type.
NAHT
“Inclusion is as much about pedagogy, as it is about the type of setting. Inclusion cannot be realised by simply expecting mainstream settings to support more pupils with SEND (previously placed in specialist settings) without the essential extra funding, trained expertise and support (including from external services, such health and social care).”
They’re also not sold on ministers’ passion for mainstream SEND units and resource bases:
“Inclusion cannot be realised by just establishing new SEN Units or Resourced Provision in mainstream schools. The risk in only focusing on this provision is that it may reduce the numbers of pupils in special schools, but they could still remain largely separate from most of the mainstream pupil population, which is not inclusion.”
And they’re refreshingly firm on the importance of parental preference in a more inclusive system:
“In a truly inclusive system, parental choice must remain. Parents of pupils with SEND should have an equal right to demand places in special schools or mainstream schools, as they judge appropriate for their children. Local authorities (LAs) should be equipped to be accountable for ensuring there is sufficient specialist provision in their area, including for children under 5.”
The NAHT wants to see more high-needs funding, and it wants it to be better targeted. It also wants to see all local authority high-needs funding deficits erased.
This union seems to want to keep EHCPs, but “they need to be supported by the administrative capacity to keep them current and therefore regularly updated. This means appropriately funding LAs. The current number of EHC plans and increasing requests for assessment risks completely overwhelming LAs.”
To sort that, the NAHT wants standardisation of both EHCP templates and Annual Review documents, less LA skulduggery with consulting schools out of term time, and health bodies to turn up and deliver at annual review time. Another thing that it wants to see is the return of an NHS-commissioned, needs-led clinical school nursing service for schools to better ensure safe care for pupils with medical needs.
What teachers’ unions want: NEU
Closer to the teaching coal-face, the recommendations from NEU and NASUWT are fairly similar to the leadership unions: they’re in favour of inclusion, but they want to know what that means, they want to work with a broader curriculum, less inspection based on attainment, and proper funding to get the job done.
The NEU’s evidence submission (link here is an open document format file) cautiously welcomes the government’s focus on inclusion, but:
“[we] want to see meaningful conversation with the profession about how it is defined. For a more inclusive system to work we need to find agreement on what inclusion means for schools and what is needed, financially, in staff training and in relation to external support for schools, to achieve academic, social and emotional success and for all children and young people to thrive.”
NEU
Like the NAHT, the NEU is also cautious about placing too much weight on mainstream SEND resource bases and units:
“Our members report both positive and negative experiences of student engagement and outcomes in such provision. It should be understood that resource bases, which must be staffed appropriately with teachers and support staff working together, are just part of the picture and that for many students for whom a large school environment does not work resource bases on site will not be the answer.”
The NEU wants to free schools of barriers they say stand in the way of inclusion. That would include reforms to accountability systems that currently judge school performance on exam outcomes. It also wants:
- more accessible curriculum and subject choices,
- more funding for both schools and local authorities,
- more time for SENCOs to do their jobs, and
- improved initial and ongoing teacher training across SEND.
On top of that, the NEU also wants the things that unions traditionally argue for: better pay for teachers and support staff, smaller class sizes as the overall numbers of pupils in schools starts to fall, and less ‘contact time’ in front of children so that teachers can plan better, attend training, and meet with families of SEND pupils.
Beyond the school gate, the NEU wants to see LAs setting up more multidisciplinary SEND specialist teams that can support schools earlier, thereby reducing the need for some EHCPs.
It wants the previous government’s Safety Valve and Delivering Better Value schemes properly audited, describing them as “sticking plasters on a gaping wound.” And it also wants price caps placed on SEND provision at independent special schools, “based on state costs.”
What teachers’ unions want: NASUWT
The NASUWT’s submission shares many of the same approaches and concerns as NEU and the school leadership unions. Like ASCL, the NASUWT wants to see whole-system changes, and complete embedding of SEND within policy planning and decision-making. They want inspection, accountability, and curriculum design to flex better to take into account the needs and context of pupils with SEND.
The NASUWT has a definition of inclusion that’s broader than the government appears to be thinking about:
“NASUWT’s interpretation of inclusion as ‘a place’ is to recognise the need for a range of education provision, which includes mainstream schools, specialist schools and specialist units. We believe that the focus should be on ensuring that pupils are able to achieve and thrive in a setting that can meet their needs.”
Like the other unions, the NASUWT wants to see earlier intervention and, in particular, health services better lashed to that objective:
“…particular attention must be paid to tackling the barriers to health service involvement in provision for SEND, to ensure that health services contribute, including through funding and supporting provision for early intervention. We also believe that the [Department of Health and Social Care] must be proactively engaged in this process.”
The NASUWT wants funding arrangements that do a much better job of anticipating, encouraging and supporting early intervention, possibly through ring-fencing. That would mean raising current thresholds and stepping away from Safety Valve and DBV:
“NASUWT has significant concerns about the Delivering Better Value (DBV) and, in particular, Safety Valve (SV) programmes, which are intended to help authorities to manage their high needs deficits and introduce sustainable practices. We have concerns that these programmes are resulting in cuts to specialist provision, reducing the quality of provision and placing greater pressures on staff working in schools and specialist services.”
NASUWT
“We believe that there is a need to review the notional budget element of school funding allocations. The current notional figure of £6,000 is arbitrary and does not reflect the real costs of meeting additional needs. Further, wider pressures on school budgets mean that the notional budget for SEN is nothing more than notional. Budget pressures also drive practices in some schools, such as discouraging the parents of potentially expensive children from seeking admission to a school.”
For a while now, the NASUWT has wanted to see radical government action when expensive independent special schools fail, and it continues to make that recommendation, “… the Government should be prepared to step in and take over running of provision along the lines adopted for failing rail companies.”
What Support staff want: GMB
The GMB’s submission focuses on improving outcomes for children and young people with SEND by addressing barriers to good use of support staff:
“Support staff are often acting as family support workers, social workers, speech and language therapists, councillors and SEND practitioners without additional pay, support or time and they feel currently that their voice is not taken into consideration. They hold a wealth of experience and knowledge that should be harnessed.”
GMB
“Often budgets are so tight that the money received via EHCP’s is distributed across the school, to cover for deficit budgets. Holding schools to account for their SEND provision when the funding they have received has not covered the basics is unfair and inherently flawed. Schools should receive adequate budget to enable to discharge their SEND duties in an effective way.”
The GMB recommends that pupils with SEN should have access to extra funding regardless of whether they are in the EHCP process. For those that are in the process, interim funding should be made available to schools so pupils can access teaching assistant support. The GMB welcomes two changes the new government has recently made—the establishment of a School Support Staff Negotiating Body, and the creation of a new specialist teaching apprenticeship for SEND and Social, Emotional and Mental Health (SEMH) – but it is cautious, as “previous experience has led to them completing an apprenticeship and then being used as cheap labour.”
Unions’ Evidence Summary: leave the law and listen to parents
On the whole, the SEND system recommendations the unions are arguing for sound fairly similar to some of what local authorities say they want to see:
- More funding, more fairly distributed, and in different ways;
- a more inclusive mainstream curriculum, assessment, and inspection system;
- more early intervention and less use of independent special schools; and
- the health sector stepping up to the plate.
But there are some big differences too. The unions aren’t lobbying for radical changes to the law. They don’t seem to want statutory support like EHCPs ripped out. They say they want parental preference and parental voices kept at the heart of the SEND system.
Some of the unions—ASCL, in particular—do want radical change to how SEND works. But it’s striking how much of that change would be driven through wider educational reform outside the world of SEND. It’s also striking that they’re effectively saying a lot of change needs to happen within the organisations that their members work in.
That might make it challenging for many of these trade union proposals to work. For one thing, it’s genuinely debatable whether all, or even most, union members share the views expressed in these evidence submissions, particularly in the school leadership unions. SNJ co-directors have recently sat in on meetings where union members were very much giving it large on the ‘golden ticket’ and pernicious ’sharp-elbowed parent’ SEND tropes.
But all the same, it’s encouraging to read submissions where big organisations are effectively saying, ‘We, our members, can and will need to work differently to help solve this problem.’ It stands in stark contrast to the evidence from local authorities and their coin-operated consultants.
If you read the first post on LA evidence to the ESC SEND inquiry, you’ll have read phenomenally arrogant arguments demanding that everyone else in the system must change around them. The teaching unions clearly think professionals can and must do more on SEND, both inside and outside of their sector.
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Also read:
- What are powerful council lobbying voices telling the Education Committee they really really want?
- If no news, send rumours: Education Committee scolds DfE over “White Paper” while its SEND Inquiry hears from young people.
- Spotlight on SEND funding: Education Committee inquiry MPs refuse to be taken in by anti-parent tropes
- Inquiries and injustice: the SEND Inquiry hears the parental perspective
- If no news, send rumours: Education Committee scolds DfE over “White Paper” while its SEND Inquiry hears from young people.
- PAC SEND report: Slightly pointless when decision-makers don’t know what they value more—money or children’s futures?
- SEN Resource Bases and Unit Provision in Secondary—what are they and do they count as inclusion?
- Renewed petition to SCRAP SEND Safety Valve and write off council High Needs debt
- Alternative Provision, SEND, and Inclusion: Should AP even exist in an inclusive system?
- Successful Additionally-Resourced Schools: A 13-step strategy and a 7-point “purpose”
- 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”
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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.
- Top Tips for the EOTAS & EHCP consultation: Protect your child’s rights to statutory SEND support - August 19, 2026
- Mainstream SEND Funding: A simple explainer, another consultation, and why it really matters - July 22, 2026
- EHCPs 2026: A relentless rise, but who’s surprised? Plus SNJ’s annual LA Hall of Shame - June 27, 2026
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