The Government keeps insisting it wants a “national conversation” on SEND, but the way it’s structuring that conversation tells a very different story. In today’s guest post, Dr Kieron Smith digs into the growing reliance on unnamed ‘experts’ in the Schools White Paper and SEND consultation proposals—experts who appear to hold significant power without any meaningful accountability.
As a parent of a young adult with Down’s syndrome, and someone who has spent years analysing how democratic systems function (and fail), Dr Smith unpicks what this shift really means for families, for transparency, and for the future of SEND decision‑making. It’s a sharp, necessary read at a moment when many parents are already feeling shut out of the reforms supposedly designed for their children.
The rise of the unchallengeable expert, by Dr Kieron Smith
The extensive use of ‘experts’ within the new Schools White Paper proposals exposes the Government’s cynical desire to remove questions and challenge within the system. Throughout the recent mock ‘national conversation’ process, pseudo-experts positioned themselves in a self-serving exercise as “SEND experts” who could provide impartial advice. This has led to the White Paper and SEND Consultation framing ‘independent data-led practice’ as something that can be delivered in neat, tidy packages to groups of children with the “most complex” needs.
This is yet another push to close the door on discussion and accountability in the SEND system – and will lead to more frustration, poorer support and less legitimacy within the education system.
Politicians can be removed, ministers can be dismissed, and because of this, there is something of an obligation on them to listen; this changes our relationship with those who govern. Appointing a range of ‘experts’, who are, well ‘The Experts’ who seemingly cannot be questioned or dismissed, is fundamentally an undemocratic and unaccountable approach to education.
There are panels in the SEND system now, often used by local authorities to block parental choices, with ‘expert members’ whose names cannot be shared, whose decisions are completely opaque. These local authority panels leave much to be desired, but they can at least be challenged—at the moment—by recourse to the SENDIST Tribunal. In the Schools White Paper/SEND proposals, this would no longer be the case.
The late Labour politician, Tony Benn, famously suggested five questions for those you meet in power:
“If one meets a powerful person … one can ask five questions: what power do you have; where did you get it; in whose interests do you exercise it; to whom are you accountable; and, how can we get rid of you? Anyone who cannot answer the last of those questions does not live in a democratic system”
Tony Benn
Were these questions asked of the proposed ‘expert’ system, they would find much wanting.
Accountability? Only if you squint
The Schools White Paper suggests that somehow, there can be a limited number of Specialist Provision Packages, selected by ‘experts’ for groups of children without ever meeting them and without factoring in individual needs. If this is the type of solution pushed by these pseudo-experts, it does not bode well for the future enactment of this plan. It offers an impoverished set of simplifications to solve the ‘problem’ of children with SEND, which do not challenge education to deliver the very best it can for an individual child.
Looking at the detail in what has been published by the Government to date, we find the use of experts at the very heart of the proposed processes. The Schools White Paper asserts that:
Specialist support will use nationally defined Specialist Provision Packages for children with the most complex needs. These will be developed and reviewed by an independent expert panel’
and further that:
We [the DfE] will appoint an independent expert panel who will oversee the development of the National Inclusion Standards and improving the quality of SEND evidence. They will also oversee the development of the new Specialist Provision Packages to underpin the specialist system’
Yet nowhere in the document is any detail given as to who these experts would be, how they would be held accountable, or what structural checks and balances would be applied. Instead, it’s a shadow panel of appointments that can wield significant power over standards, the evidence they deem relevant, and the resultant packages and criteria for support through an EHCP that will be put in place. This combination a complete dismantling of democratic oversight and accountability.
The use of ‘experts’ by government over the last few years has cleaved to ‘technocratic’ and managerialist approaches—approaches that suck the air of debate out of the room. Experts in this context being, ‘The Experts’, whose knowledge cannot be questioned, meaning that they hold all the cards, and by dint of their very appointment, they then become the independent arbiters of what is right. However, their increased use in contentious spaces to stifle debate has the effect of undermining democratic processes of collaboration and questioning. Their role leads to an undermining, rather than building, of trust and authority. Parents’ aspirations for their children’s education are being crowded out by those saying, ‘no debate’.
Parents as ‘experts’… but not those experts
In the Information on SEND reform for parents and carers who have children with EHCPs document published alongside the White Paper, the Government writes that ‘Parents have told us they often do not feel listened to and want to be recognised as experts on their own children’s needs’. However, let’s be clear here, these are obviously not the experts the Government is seeking. Instead, they clarify ‘packages will be developed by an independent panel of experts, taking on the views of parents’ . Ah, so parents are only experts when used to justify policy, but not in the way they actually are—in their own children.
Were the SEND system to have an elected panel of parents overseeing provision, there might be some room for debate. However, we have had a clear insight from the non-‘conversation’ in the run-up to the publication of the White Paper just what ‘taking on the views of parents’ looks like. Here, bar hand-selected, uncritical parent voices, no questions were given a substantive hearing. Instead, the ‘experts’ were given a platform to speak and share their views.
The guidance emerging from these very ‘experts’ has given us, surprise, surprise, a solution to be run by…those very same experts. A more craven and self-serving solution you could not find.
Support shaped by experts you can’t challenge
The SEND consultation document asserts that the Government heard that “They [parents] have also told us stronger accountability will be essential to putting the system right”—yet the use of experts in the defining, decision-making, and administration of all these changes is the very antithesis of this accountability. Accountability is referenced multiple times during the consultation document; however, as a vague assertion, not offering any clear definition of how any of these power structures or experts will actually be called to account.
The proposals will be ‘supported by stronger accountability across all partners’ and that it is a ‘more accountable framework’, and that greater use of data and statutory requirements are clear will ‘will help strengthen local accountability and give parents greater confidence’. Ah, parental confidence—that’s what we need. That’ll do it.
The proposals lead to a general sense that ‘the SEND system’ will become an even more faceless and unquestionable entity with this move to experts and frameworks, where all are responsible, but none are specifically to be held accountable. Reading the consultation document to find who can be challenged for poor decision-making and a lack of provision is like trying to nail a proverbial accountability jelly to a wall.
The system, as it stands, is designed to have each body as defined by the Schools White Paper, point responsibility at another body. It’s not the setting, it’s the local authority. It’s not the local authority, it’s the Expert Panel. Round and round. Kafka would be impressed. When pushing back on The Schools White Paper, I suggest we should take the last of Benn’s questions for these ‘experts’: how can we get rid of you?
About the author
Dr Kieron Smith is the author of The Politics of Down Syndrome (Zero Books).
He is a parent of a young adult with Down syndrome and has a PhD in Organisational Democracy from the University of Winchester.
Dr Smith is the husband of our own Dr Sharon Smith
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Key Content
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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- WEBINAR RECORDING! The implications for children’s legal rights to EHCPs and EOTAS of the Government’s SEND proposals - September 3, 2026
- From suspicion to support: why the Government’s child protection reforms matter for disabled children - August 28, 2026
- Have your say on the future of transport for disabled children and young people - August 25, 2026
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