CSIE response to the Department for Education’s consultation on the Green Paper SEND Review: Right support, right place, right time

25 July 2022

CSIE has responded to the Department for Education’s consultation on the Green Paper SEND Review: Right support, right place, right time. CSIE’s main response to this consultation was included in the response from the collective voice of the Special Educational Consortium. In its additional submission CSIE drew particular attention to the following issues:

i) The need for new SEND legislation is simply not justified. CSIE believes that there is little evidence to support the Government’s proposals for new legislation. There seems to be no analysis included in the Review of how these proposals will create more inclusive settings, or improve outcomes for disabled children & young people.

ii) National Standards stand to undermine existing rights. The Review proposes a set of National SEND Standards which, if approved, could get in the way of existing person-centred decision-making processes set out in the Children and Families Act and the Code of Practice. In other words, the introduction of the proposed standards would risk undermining children’s rights as specified in existing legislation.

iii) Changing the way inclusive education is financed, is a key lever for achieving more widespread inclusion and better outcomes for all. Recent evidence suggests that in a system set up to fund individual children’s needs, costs can spiral out of control. A restructured system, with a financing model focused on generating services rather than attempting to meet individual need, has been shown to be more effective. All the more so, when sufficient incentives are offered and barriers to inclusion are removed.

The government had originally announced in 2019 that it would carry out a review of the special educational needs and disability (SEND) system in England. This was in order to find out what had been achieved by the major reforms introduced by the Children and Families Act in 2014. This had intended to overhaul a system which was no longer seen as fit for purpose, and to re-ignite parental confidence in the system. By 2019 the proportion of children attending separate special schools had already started to rise, as shown by CSIE’s Trends reports among other reports.

In March 2022 the SEND Review concluded that there are three main issues in the SEND statutory system causing concern: frustrated parents and young people; poor outcomes for children and young people with labels of SEND; and unsustainable financial strain on the system.

CSIE’s additional submission highlights that this, alone, is a major cause for concern. The Children and Families Act was developed precisely in order to provide: a clearer focus on outcomes; a stronger voice for parents; a more strategic local approach; and a greater degree of accountability. It seems, therefore, that the Children and Families Act has not managed to solve the problems it was supposed to address.

The Special Educational Consortium’s response includes a detailed analysis of the reasons behind the concerns identified in the Green Paper, and offers a number of recommendations for developing more inclusive schools and securing better outcomes for children, young people and their families. In the long-term, these are also expected to relieve the pressures on high needs budgets.

CSIE stands by these recommendations and suggests that the most effective way forward is to ensure the consistent implementation of existing legislation, in line with these recommendations.

After all, frustrated users and poor outcomes are matters of implementation, and do not call for amendments to the law or guidance. There really seems to be no evidence to suggest that any law reform is needed, or that any arbitrary proposals will deliver the improvements that continue to be needed in the system.

We remain confident that when the SEC recommendations have been implemented and models of financing inclusion have been revised in line with recent evidence, it will finally be possible for children to receive the right support, in the right place, at the right time.