SEND Inquiry 2025, SEND Politics, Solving the SEND Crisis, special needs

SNJ’s 80 practical recommendations to solve the SEND Emergency

The SNJ submission to the Education Select Committee was published this week. In it, we detailed 80, yes 80!, practical, workable recommendations for improving the system. Surprisingly enough, none of them included cutting EHCPs.

The whole thing is over 22,000 words long—pretty comprehensive. If you want to read that, you can either see it online from the Education Select Committee, or properly formatted as a PDF – both link and PDF are at the end.

We’re not going to reproduce it all below, you’ll be relieved to know. Instead, we are just including the recommendations, so you can then refer to the main document if you want to read the rationale for each one. We’re very proud of the thought and work we all, as a team, put into this. These are the things we would expect a Labour government that should have socialist principles to be doing.

We’re not naïve. We know many of these recommendations are unlikely to be welcomed by a government that’s turning out to be as far removed from caring and compassionate as it’s possible to be. But we also know that there are lots of MPs—some of them SEND parents and some even SNJ readers—who will fight alongside us to retain disabled children’s legal rights if our worst fears prove true.

At the front of our minds are those families who cannot self-advocate, who know nothing of what’s going on, not even through the many and varied SEND Facebook groups. We do this in the hope that one day their capacity won’t matter because the system will support them without a fight. Though it looks like we are about to have a fight to get there…

Our recommendations come from many years as parents and strategic SEND advocates with a deep knowledge of the SEND system—and for the most part, unpaid. They are rooted in fostering and nurturing the well-being and inclusion of children with SEN and disabilities. Our children and your children. This is not a job for us; we live the reality every day. Even when our children become adults, we cannot just dust off our hands and say “job done” because it never is.

If you want to get in touch with us about anything in the document, use our contact form. If you just want to skip to download the PDF, click here.

Did we miss anything out? Let us know.

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SEND LAW & OPEN RESEARCH

Section 1: Why are numbers of children with SEN/Disabilities increasing?

  1. Forecasting future SEND: Relevant Government departments must collaborate with experts, futurists and researchers on forecasting future risks and opportunities in education and health for children and young people. 
  2. Prepare for emergencies: The DfE MUST prepare for future emergencies. We saw during the pandemic that although there was some guidance from the DfE, the laws protecting disabled children were “relaxed”, which led to a reduction in provision and support for many pupils with SEND.

Section 2: Assessing the current quality of SEN support in mainstream schools and early years settings

  1. Golden Inclusion thread: Guidance for all types of mainstream schools should have a golden thread running throughout emphasising inclusion in everything a school does.
  2. OAP funding: To make Ordinarily Available Provision policies viable in schools, a large increase in schools’ delegated SEND budget is needed. Additionally, this “notional” budget should be renamed the SENCO budget and ringfenced to ensure it is spent as intended.
  3. OAP guidance: Provide detailed government guidance to ensure consistent and lawful OAP implementation across all areas, with minimum levels guaranteed. This can have oversight from Ofsted. This guidance must be presented in an easy-to-understand format for busy staff and families to get to grips with. For example, a summary document with links to further detail and examples. We would suggest the government funds an expansion or addition to the excellent nasen SEND teacher handbook to include both early years SEND and an identifying mental health toolkit.

Section 3: Working with parents

  1. Meaningful Co-Production: Develop genuine co-production practices by ensuring parental involvement from the start of a child’s SEND journey. Update the SEND Code of Practice 2015 (CoP) to include how teachers can better work with parents when developing a child’s SEN Support. Seek to replace harmful anti-parent narratives with recognition of parents’ roles as partners in their child’s education and care. For strategic advocacy, follow NHS practices by compensating families for their time and input as Experts by Experience in the SEND system.
  2. Teacher Training: Include skills for working with parents in Initial Teacher Training (ITT) and ongoing CPD, emphasising person-centred planning and partnership building.
  3. More inclusive Parent Carer Forums: Expand PCF capacity, diversity, and funding to ensure they can effectively represent a broader range of parental views.
  4. Amplify Young People’s Voices: Amend the SEND Code of Practice to ensure all children’s views are considered, regardless of communication method or complexity of needs.
  5.  Transparent Decision-Making: Include experts by experience on EHCP panels, record full discussions, and make minutes available to parents and tribunals to improve accountability.
  6. Accept Independent Reports: Amend the SEND CoP to instruct councils to accept evidence from independent sources such as private expert reports. We must trust that practitioners will abide by their respective codes of conduct in preparing reports, whoever they are funded by.

Section 4: Early Years

  1. Update Guidance: Revise and expand the DfE guide to SEND in Early Years and the SEND Code of Practice to provide clear, accessible information, including rights to EHCPs before school age.
  2. Centralised Training Portal: Develop a portal listing all accredited EY training, with details on qualifications, content, costs, and access.
  3. Expand Early Years SENCO Training: Evaluate the SEND Change Programme’s Level 3 SENCO initiative and roll it out nationally if successful.
  4. Increase EY Investment: Work with Early Years organisations to ensure funding for early years settings supports adequate staffing ratios and competitive remuneration for EY practitioners.

Section 5: Inclusion in practice

  1. Establish a clear definition of inclusion: The DfE must define what constitutes an inclusive mainstream school and provide statutory guidance to ensure consistent implementation.
  2. National strategy for Resourced Provision: Develop an evidence-based national strategy for RPs with clear definitions, consistent terminology, and statutory guidance on their appropriate use and quality assurance. Consider geographical placement to ensure genuine inclusion.
  3. Funding and Workforce Development: Conduct a review to establish how many teachers, specialist staff and therapists are currently available, how many are in training, and how many are actually needed to support sufficient staffing of new resourced and other provision. 
  4. Mandate Inclusion in ITT and CPD: Embed “Quality First Inclusive Teaching” into every ITT module and ongoing professional development, emphasising strategies to include disabled children in all school activities. Include mandatory training on neurodiversity and inclusion in CPD programmes to equip teachers to support all children effectively.
  5. Proactive Inclusion for trips and activities: Require schools to include on their SEND information reports how they include all children on trips and extracurricular activities.
  6. Accessible Infrastructure: Mandate full accessibility for all new school and FE buildings. Support schools that are not accessible to become so.
  7. Update equality policies: Ensure school policies, including zero-tolerance behaviour policies, align with the Equality Act 2010, emphasising reasonable adjustments and inclusion over exclusion.

Section 6: How can inclusivity and expertise in mainstream schools and early years settings be improved to achieve consistent, high-quality SEN support? What is the DfE’s role in this?

  1. Improve Guidance Clarity and Accessibility: Ensure all DfE guidance is clear, cohesive, and actionable, written collaboratively by education experts, not just officials.
  2. Centralised Resource Portal: Create a single, centralised and user-friendly portal on the gov.uk website linking all SEND-related guidance and resources. Use interactive flow charts to show interlinked or interdependent legislation and guidance.
  3. Invest in specialist services: Increase funding and workforce capacity to allow early and proactive support by education psychologists, speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, and autism/neurodiversity outreach teams to reduce waiting times and ensure children receive timely support.
  4. Resource Allocation During Waiting Periods: Develop interim resources and support systems for children waiting for specialist assessments to keep them engaged and supported in school. However, do not make referrals dependent on access to interim resources.
  5. Monitor and Evaluate Guidance: Establish mechanisms to regularly review and refine DfE guidance to ensure it remains relevant, evidence-based, and effective.

Section 7: Should SEN support be put on a statutory footing and what would this look like in practice?

  1. Statutory Framework for Graduated Response: Pick a single name for SEN Support, / Graduated response /Assess, Plan, Do, Review process. Place on a statutory footing to ensure early intervention is mandated and consistently applied across schools. Establish clear guidelines and accountability measures to ensure compliance, with input from SEND legal experts, educationalists, parents, and public consultation.
  2. Training for Schools: Introduce mandatory training modules for school staff to understand their legal obligations regarding reasonable adjustments and timely support for disabled pupils. If not already, this could be included in the Universal SEND Services training.

Section 8: Outcomes for children and young people with SEND and how these can be improved

  1. Ring-Fence and increase the delegated SEND Budget: Increase the notional budget per SEND pupil to reflect rising costs over the past 15 years. Ringfencing and renaming the “SENCO budget” will ensure it cannot be diverted to non-SEND purposes. Require mainstream schools to account for their SEND spending similar to how they report on Pupil Premium, ensuring transparency in resource allocation.
  2. Empower and Support SENCOs: Establish mechanisms that ensure the SENCO can access and manage the allocated SEND funds. Ensure SENCOs are not overloaded with too many additional roles to enable them to focus their efforts on their main role.
  3. Strengthen Preparation for Adulthood Planning:  Expand Supported Internships and Apprenticeships: Increase the availability of supported internships and additional apprenticeship support for young people with EHCPs, with particular attention to groups currently underserved (e.g., young people with Down’s syndrome). Commission research to track post-internship outcomes and the effectiveness of apprenticeship support, including retention rates and successful transitions into meaningful employment.
  4. Extend EHCP Support into Higher Education (HE): Make support for students with SEND at the university level statutory by extending the EHCP framework to higher education. Develop clearer accountability and support mechanisms for students in HE to prevent high drop-out rates and ensure that necessary adjustments and mentoring are in place. Review additional benefits, such as Universal Credit eligibility for full-time disabled students, to reduce barriers to participation in HE.

Section 9: Workforce issues for teachers, SENCOs, specialists, early years practitioners and all those who work with children with SEND

  1. Invest in the SEND Workforce: Launch a national recruitment drive for SEND roles, with incentives such as better pay, improved career pathways (e.g., TAs progressing to qualified teaching roles), and enhanced working conditions.
  2. Restore and Fund Specialist Advisory Teams: Reinstate local authority specialist advisory teacher teams to provide support and guidance on SEND conditions.
  3. Leverage Private Sector Expertise: Provide funding for LAs to hire private practitioners to address backlogs in assessments and support.

Section 10: SEND Training in schools

  1. Integrate Universal SEND Services into ITT and Make It Permanent: Mandate USS training in schools through statutory guidance, with modules integrated into ITT for consistent and standardised SEND training across the country. It should be expanded to cover early years and post-16 education to ensure comprehensive support across all stages.
  2. Establish Government-Funded SEND Training Hubs to deliver robust, research-based SEND training and resources for schools and FE providers.

Section 11: The role of and capacity of specialist schools, independent schools and Alternative Provision

  1. Preserve and Strengthen Specialist Provision: Maintain specialist schools to support students with complex needs and explore replicating effective specialist practices, such as smaller classes and in-house therapies, within the maintained sector to improve access and reduce costs.

Section 12: EHCPs

  1. Do not dilute children’s rights or remove EHCPs: Vulnerable children and their families are not at fault and should not be penalised because of faulty decisions elsewhere in the system
  2. Adopt a Collaborative and Flexible Approach to initial Needs Assessment: Require local authorities to meet with families, schools, and professionals early in the EHC process to explore tailored interventions or SEN Support, reducing refusals and appeals while ensuring swift action when an EHCP is necessary.
  3. Ensure Placement Decisions Reflect the Child’s Best Interests: Mandate that placement decisions prioritise an honest assessment of whether a child’s needs can be met in mainstream education with appropriate support, without financial or capacity-driven biases from local authorities.

Section 13: How can waiting times for EHC Plans be improved?

  1. LA officer training: Provide Expert Training for SEN Case Officers and External Support for Parents: Ensure SEN Case officers have access to external SEND law training.
  2. Ensure Acceptance of Private Assessments and Remove the Six-Week Decision Period for Certain Conditions: Make it unlawful for LAs to refuse private assessments from qualified professionals and eliminate the six-week assessment decision period for conditions that typically require an EHCP, like Down’s syndrome.

Section 14: EHCPs:  What can be done to support parents, carers and children or young people before, during and after the EHC Plan process?

  1. Reintroduce Independent Supporters/Keyworkers: Restore the Independent Supporter role to offer impartial, holistic support for families navigating both the EHCP process and subsequent annual reviews. These keyworkers would liaise with all professionals involved to reduce parental burden and ensure smoother communication.
  2. Fund and Commission SENDIASS Centrally and Independently: Ensure SENDIASS is adequately funded, centrally coordinated, and managed by independent providers rather than local authorities to eliminate conflicts of interest and improve service delivery.

Section 15: EHCPs: How can the EHC Plan process be made non-adversarial?

  1. Fund councils properly: The process is not inherently adversarial. If LAs could fund their statutory duties and schools were inclusive, there would be less incentive for them to break the law to try to save money.
  2. Ensure Mediation works: Enforce consequences for LAs refusing to participate in mediation when a parent wants to, and with decisions automatically made in the parent’s favour if LAs refuse. Mediators should be responsible for following up on non-compliance and providing clear legal guidance to parents for further action.

Also read: Act now! Sign and Share the Parliamentary Petition to PROTECT SEND RIGHTS!

Section 16: EHCPs:  What alternatives are there to the EHC Plan process?

  1. Do not replace the EHCP process. If early intervention plans succeed, need for EHCPs should naturally fall and this needs to have time to filter through.
  2. Routine Early Developmental Checks: Introduce a universal developmental check for four-year-olds, to enable earlier identification of needs and the provision of early and appropriate support to avoid needs escalating.

Section 17: EHCPs: Current and future SEND and HEALTH needs

  1. System-Wide Overhaul: The ongoing Curriculum and Assessment Review should support a holistic, compassionate, and inclusive educational experience for all.
  2. Use Artificial Intelligence for Efficiency and Planning: AI can speed up and improve the EHCP process by training LLMs on relevant legislation, with human quality control. It can also be used at a strategic level, using data to forecast population, location, and likely needs to predict future requirements and to ensure provision is responsive and well-resourced.
  3. Limit or prohibit profit on independent specialist provision: While independent special schools can provide much-needed provision, government could restrict excessive profiteering and increase transparency to ensure public funds are not used to line shareholders’ pockets.
  4. Issue regular reminders of duties: Use automated systems to remind LAs, health, and education settings of their statutory duties. For example, termly reminders to check compliance, backed by accountability measures for consistently failing to meet requirements.
  5. DMO research: Commission a research evaluation of the Designated Medical Officer/Clinical Officer role, considering the need for additional posts in larger areas to ensure effective coordination.

Section 18: SEND Improvement Plan

  1. Foster wellbeing: Across government, it should be emphasised that policy needs to be evidence-based and based on fostering wellbeing
  2. High-quality consultants: Ensure consultants have a record of success in SEND, that they are value for money, and they understand the concept of wellbeing being uppermost in decision-making

Section 19: Post 16 Provision

  1. Maintain EHCP Rights to Age 25: This is taken up by a small number of young people with the greatest needs that are not easy to meet. For some, this means residential provision, but for most, continued development of training options means these EHCPs have less cost associated with them.
  2. Enhance Transition Preparation and Raise Expectations: Improve the availability of advice by supporting charities that already do this well, such as NDTi and others. Review and develop national guidance and pathways to careers such as apprenticeships and internships that promote independence and ongoing educational engagement.
  3. Address SEND Transport Challenges: Recognise the statutory gap in post-16 SEND transport and develop cost-effective solutions—such as improved procurement practices or subsidised transport options—to ensure accessible, affordable travel for all eligible young people.ost-16 SEND transport and develop cost-effective solutions—such as improved procurement practices or subsidised transport options—to ensure accessible, affordable travel for all eligible young people.

Section 20: Accountability and inspection of SEND provision

  1. Individual responsibility: Introduce clear legal and professional sanctions for lead officials and practitioners who persistently breach or preside over non-compliant departments whose actions cause harm to disabled children and their families
  2. Boost SEND Tribunal Capacity: This will help to clear the backlog of cases that is preventing timely hearings. Additionally, hold LAs to account for last-minute concessions or no-shows by awarding costs to the family and preventing the LA from employing external barristers at the FFT.
  3. Inspecting schools:
    1. Exclusions: Revise inspection criteria to rigorously examine exclusions, including the number, reasons, and underlying causes. Update exclusions guidance to require a full assessment of SEND needs before a child can be excluded. 
    2. Evaluate the effective use of delegated SEND budgets, parental involvement, staff qualifications, and ongoing SEND training.
    3. Enhance the use by Ofsted of parental and council evidence to detect cases where schools are deterring and/or rejecting SEND admissions.
    4. Include inspection questions about how long children remain on SEN Support, ensuring that it is not used as a holding category instead of progressing to an EHCP where necessary.
    5. Inspectors should assess how well schools include SEND students in classroom activities, trips, and breakfast clubs
    6. Ensure inspectors track attendance of SEND students on inspection days to identify potential exclusionary practices.
  4. Reject proposals that use affordability as a criterion in SEND Tribunal decisions to ensure that cost-saving measures do not compromise disabled children’s rights.
  5. Call on professional bodies to investigate more rigorously where public bodies’ practices prevent their members from abiding by their professional codes

Section 21: How can Area SEND inspections of local authorities be made more effective?

  1. Ofsted should set a clear restart date for monitoring visits, ensuring continuous oversight of struggling areas.
  2. Inspections should penalise LAs that have a high proportion of failed tribunal appeals. 
  3. Inspections should restart open meetings with parents and engage with the DfE and DHSC to boost publicity for upcoming area inspections.
  4. The framework should keep at its heart what is important to disabled children and their families
  5. When the Department for Education (DfE) intervenes in a failing area, Ofsted and the CQC should retain involvement to track progress.
  6. Ofsted should reinstate in-person open meetings with parents during inspections to ensure direct engagement and transparency.
  7. Area SEND inspection survey opening dates notices should be issued on the Wednesday prior to opening the following Monday. It should be mandatory for LAs and relevant health bodies to inform all registered education settings and parents on their service of the survey. Ofsted should proactively share area inspection notifications via its official social media channels.
  8. SEND inspection frameworks should require legal compliance as a minimum standard and actively report non-compliance.

Section 22: The role of other organisations such as the DfE, the LGSCO and the CQC in the accountability system.

  1. Develop a SEND performance scheme modelled on the NHS Maternity Incentive Scheme, with measurable metrics (e.g., EHCP timeliness, appeal outcomes, family co-production, quality audits) tied to a significant portion of funding.
  2. Resume publishing anonymised SEND Tribunal decisions to track patterns of unlawful behaviour and allowing its use in inspections for a clearer picture of practice.
  3. Recommendations for LGSCO:
    1. Expand the remit and budget of the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) to ensure timely, robust investigations and follow-up on LA commitments.
    2. Introduce meaningful penalties for frequent offenders, such as fines on CEOs or conditional funding based on meeting agreed audit criteria.
    3. Establish a follow-up mechanism to hold LAs accountable for implementing recommendations, ensuring that commitments are monitored and enforced over time.
Promoted

Section 23: How have Safety Valve, and/or DBV in SEND have affected your child’s support and outcomes?

  1. Scrap the Safety Valve Scheme entirely:  The current Safety Valve program has fostered adversarial relationships between LAs, schools, and families and has not stabilised high-needs finances. Instead, reallocate efforts toward genuinely supporting statutory duties without imposing contradictory financial constraints.
  2. Write-off debt:  Initiate a program of DSG debt write-offs for local government deficits related to SEND.
  3. Reform funding arrangements by standardising the high-needs banding system nationally and increasing place funding for state special schools.
  4. Ensure essential services, such as SEND transport for older students, are adequately funded to prevent detrimental impacts on families.

Download the SNJ SEND Inquiry submission as a PDF

Download the SNJ Inquiry submission

Or, you can see the version on the Committee website (formatting stripped out, so harder to read)

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