The accountability investigations team, Measure What Matters, is back with more SEND revelations and a call to action for teachers, teaching assistants and headteachers to share your experiences
Schools across England face well‑recognised pressures: chronic underfunding, workforce shortages, rising levels of need, and ever‑increasing expectations to deliver what is now often badged as ‘inclusion’—the challenge of keeping thousands of children in crisis on the school roll, and attending mainstream classrooms. These national challenges are widely known and well-documented.
However, in our view, these pressures are masking a second, equally serious failure; one rooted in culture and administration. It’s now critically undermining schools’ ability to support children with SEND.
Measure What Matters is an independent public‑interest initiative examining transparency, accountability and statutory compliance across local government and public services, beginning with SEND, where systemic failure is most visible. We draw on lived experience, verifiable data, professional expertise and community insight to understand how public services are actually functioning—and where they are not.
Persistent failure causing real harm
Over recent months, we have gathered substantial evidence from families and, increasingly, from teachers, school leaders and SEND professionals. What we are hearing is consistent, widespread and deeply concerning.
The pattern is clear: local authority SEND services are catastrophically and persistently failing to deliver at the most basic operational level– in their administration, communication, decision‑making, timeliness, record‑keeping and the most basic execution of statutory duties.
These are not abstract policy failures. They are children, families and schools being failed right at the point of delivery.
Schools are responsible for supporting and protecting children, while remaining dependent on the same local authority systems that are obstructing access to the support the law requires. There is no consistent or effective mechanism for schools to challenge decisions or poor local SEND practices that contradict professional judgement or impede the delivery of support.
It’s an impossible ethical position, repeated daily in schools across the country. No professional should be placed in this position.
What teachers are seeing
Much has now been written about the gulf between families’ lived experience and the direction of current SEND reform proposals. These proposals still seem set to raise thresholds for specialist support, increase pressure on mainstream schools to do more with less, and challenge the very legal framework that safeguards all children’s rights to a suitable education.
And yet, what is almost entirely absent from that debate is the unfiltered voice of educators.
The national debate is dominated by the views of academy leaders, sector education directors, school policy strategists, and so-called behaviour and attendance ‘Tsars’.
Who we hear far less from are:
- Headteachers
- Teachers
- SENCOs
- Early Years Practitioners
- and critically, Teaching Assistants—often the first and last line of support for children in crisis.
In our view, these voices really matter because—like children and families—day after day, they see exactly where support actually collapses in practice.
And, they can help answer the central question that SEND reform must confront:
Is the SEND system failing because the legal framework is wrong, or because access to the support it is meant to guarantee is being systematically undermined in delivery?
So far, the evidence we’ve received points overwhelmingly to the latter.
Early findings from schools
Undoubtedly, chronic underfunding is real. Schools urgently need more resources, not less. Real‑terms cuts, rising costs, staffing shortages, and limited specialist capacity have pushed SEND to breaking point.
But this cannot be where the conversation ends.
Schools are telling us that even where resources exist, support often fails to reach children, because delivery processes break down long before provision is delivered. Maladministration is not a secondary issue—it is the primary mechanism by which urgent support is being obstructed on the ground.
Early findings from our schools’ evidence‑gathering exercise show:
- 83% report communication from local authority SEND services is delayed, inconsistent or absent
- 87% say EHCPs are issued incomplete or inaccurate
- 80% report delays or refusals when schools are requesting assessment or support
- 77% say EHCP funding they require is incorrect or delayed
- 84% describe local authority administrative processes as unreliable
- 86% report receiving insufficient rationale for decisions
- 71% say children with EHCPs have been placed in their school against professional judgement
- 91% report children remaining on roll without access to the curriculum due to unresolved placements
But perhaps most concerning of all:
- 100% report pressure to retain a child on their roll, despite stating they cannot meet their needs
- 100% report that avoidable delays in SEND support are contributing to issues, including exclusions, reduced timetables, and persistent absence.
- 100% report how local authority denial or delay of support—even where needs are clearly evidenced—is seriously eroding trust between home and school, and placing significant emotional strain on teachers, parents and carers.
Fundamentally dysfunctional local authorities
These are not marginal issues. They point to a system that is not merely struggling, but fundamentally dysfunctional- culturally and operationally—and failing to meet even its most basic statutory responsibilities.
The verbatim testimonies we are receiving describe educators whose professional judgement is routinely ignored, whose staff are drowning in bureaucracy, not because the law requires it, but because layers and layers of locally created administrative process have been built around it.
They describe chaotic maladministration: incorrect or missing data, obstructive panel approval processes, lost records, missed meetings, opaque decision‑making, and a culture in which poor – and often evidently unlawful- decisions are being made, defended, and then left undelivered.
Framework Failure v Implementation Failure
- If a child waits months, even years, for an assessment that should take weeks,
- If an EHCP arrives incomplete or unenforceable,
- If funding is delayed or withheld,
- If placements are forced against professional advice,
- If schools are left simply absorbing needs they cannot meet,
…then we are not evaluating whether the law works. We are evaluating the consequences of failing to apply it.
Dismantle the law at your peril—for you will dismantle children’s futures
At Measure What Matters, we often put it this way:
If a safety net is failing because someone has slashed holes in it, the solution is not to abolish safety nets.
The solution is to repair the tears.
SEND law is the legislative safety net: carefully defined, progressive legislation designed to ensure that children who require additional support can access it, when they need it and where they need it.
And while chronic underfunding remains the critical underlying pressure that must be addressed, chronic, systemic maladministration, whether by local authorities or any future delivery body, is the gaping tear preventing this system from functioning.
Reforms that start from a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem will not arrive at the correct answer.
Why teachers’ voices matter now
Our work over the last 18 months has indicated there is no question that the SEND system is in crisis and requires urgent change. It is our experience that teachers are not resisting reform. Parents are not resisting reform. Professionals are not resisting reform.
What educators are resisting are glossy narratives of inclusion that bear little resemblance to the conditions in which they are expected to deliver it, and a failure to address the issues that are pushing them into crisis.
Teachers in mainstream schools are the system’s litmus test. They are telling us that a child whose needs are repeatedly and unlawfully denied support will not “develop resilience”. They deteriorate. A child unsupported in Year 3 is often in crisis by Year 5—and out of school by Year 7. Escalating rates of emotionally-based school avoidance (EBSNA), suspensions, and exclusions are the predictable consequences of prolonged, unmet need in their schools.
Government is still misunderstanding the problem
For this reason, we believe teachers are resisting reform driven primarily by cost, and built on a fundamentally inaccurate understanding of the problem. Proposals that seek to remove or weaken the only functioning legal safety net, while reframing this crisis as a failure of schools to be sufficiently “inclusive”, are simply untenable.
If national policy proceeds on the assumption that the SEND framework has been tried and failed, we risk repeating—or worsening—the very failures that have brought the system to breaking point.
This evidence-gathering exercise exists because educators hold critical experiential knowledge of where SEND services break down in practice- evidence that is largely absent from the national conversation. The absence of their voices must not be mistaken for acquiescence. Their experience must be acknowledged, understood, and acted upon.
What Happens Next: A Call to Educators
To understand what is really happening, we believe policymakers must look beyond national narratives and examine the SEND system at the micro level, where children, families and staff experience it day to day, rather than relying on the polished macro accounts that continue to dominate public debate.
Educators: your insight is now critical.
- It will help to determine whether the patterns of poor practice being reported as critical barriers are isolated incidents or evidence of a systemic failure in SEND delivery.
- It will also help to identify whether there are areas where, despite identical financial constraints, statutory processes still remain lawful, consistent and functional.
If such pockets exist, we must learn from them.
And if they do not, we must confront what that means.
We are increasingly concerned that current reform proposals entirely ignore this lived reality; one where chaotic maladministration has become synonymous with many of the difficulties experienced by schools, children and families. While financial pressure is real, much of the harm being reported is cultural and administrative in nature. These failures cannot be explained—or solved—by funding alone.
They require visibility, accountability, and immediate improvement in how statutory duties are delivered in practice. A crisis for children, families and schools, driven by systemic non-compliance and maladministration, cannot be re-framed as a systemic design failure.
What We Need from educators
Today, we are asking teachers, teaching assistants, SENCOs and headteachers to step forward and share their experience.
At Measure What Matters, our work focuses on understanding the impact of public services, not as they appear in policy, but at the point of delivery, where LA decisions and administration either translate into support for children or obstruct it.
To inform this, we have set out a series of statements reflecting the cultural, administrative and procedural issues being reported by schools across multiple regions. We are inviting education professionals to indicate whether these statements reflect their own experience (Agree / Disagree). There is also space to provide additional observations or examples where helpful.
Our aim is to verify these patterns collectively and understand their prevalence, so that experience and lived reality—not political narrative—informs national reform.
Your views will be shared directly with policymakers, MPs and those shaping the future of SEND. It is vital that the lived experience of children, families and educators forms the foundation of change, NOT ideology, abstract pedagogy or political rhetoric.
Our view is simple: SEND reform without the voices of those most directly affected has no democratic or moral mandate.
You can speak freely and anonymously
We recognise that many educators do not feel able to speak openly. For this reason, responses are fully anonymous.
🔒 We do not collect names, school details, email addresses, IP addresses or metadata. Nothing you share will be attributable to you or your school.
We are no longer debating whether failure exists, only its shape: where and why support collapses, how decisions are made, where communication breaks down, and which procedural failures cause the most harm.
By adding your voice, you will help to turn your individual experience into collective evidence to ensure the realities of practice are properly evidenced and reflected in decisions about the future of SEND in Schools in England.
Some example teacher quotes:
“LA key workers often unavailable and unresponsive”
“All children are impacted, interventions cannot be run as we would wish”
“EHC needs assessments are being refused and these pre-verbal children are almost always declined special school places, even with evidence that this is the most appropriate place for them”
“The LA has lost sight of what is important. They are so focused on targets and procedure that they are forgetting the child should be at the heart of every decision. There is a lack of specialist places and a lack of funding. It’s chaos.”
“It’s failing the children who are supposed to be at the heart of [LA NAME]’s philosophy. They clearly are not!”
“Children who cannot cope with curriculum and not correct provision spend time in corridor running around, refusing to do work. Trashing library, notice boards, hitting and abusing staff.”
“All children are impacted, interventions cannot be run as we would wish”
“Email naming us as placement and then sent to parents within minutes – no professional discussion with us about why the local authority have not upheld our concerns”
“EHCP Reviews follow no statutory process. They are often finalised or amended without parents knowledge. Some of these reviews remove known needs from section C and G which then removes the responsibility for meeting these needs”
“EHC needs assessments are being refused and these pre-verbal children are almost always declined special school places, even with evidence that this is the most appropriate place for them”
“The local authority have no regard for the issues this causes in trying to run a school. We are inclusive, but these children need and deserve something more suitable”
“Last year we were faced with needing to set up an additional class due to the rising complex needs within school… When EHCPs were finalised they were grossly underfunded and misrepresented the needs of the children.”
“Some case officers are good but others never reply to communications and (eventually) issue draft EHCPs that need significant revisions. Funding never covers provision in Section F even in cases where the provision is essential to keep the child safe”
Parents, please share with your school before the end of term, or email this article to your child’s teacher, TA, SENCO and headteacher
Note: Data reflects responses submitted up to 14.12.25. Findings should be interpreted as indicative early evidence. “Unknown / unsure” responses have been excluded from this analysis. A full breakdown will be provided once the dataset has closed.
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Also read:
- The toxic culture of obstruction that’s taken root inside England’s council SEND services is not only unchecked, it’s encouraged
- EHCPs 2026: A relentless rise, but who’s surprised? Plus SNJ’s annual LA Hall of Shame
- The relentless march of SEND reform only hears views that fit the narrative
- The Government thinks Ofsted will ensure SEND reform accountability. This evidence suggests ‘significant concern’.
- Not in our name: How manufacturing consent for proposed SEND reforms has broken the social contract.
- Are SEND lawyers REALLY opposing the Government’s reform proposals just to protect their “vested interests”?
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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