Teaching unions dismiss £4bn pledged for Send overhaul as ‘drop in bucket’
Good morning. Of all the government U-turns performed by Labour so far, it is arguable that the most serious was the decision to shelve plans to restrict some disability welfare payments. The U-turn left a £5bn hole in the government finances, but the controversy also massively damaged the government’s relations with disabled people and those who care about them, as well as raising doubts about whether it would ever have the ability to implement welfare-related reforms that might be unpopular with Labour MPs nervous about cost cutting.
The government is not to going to return to the issue of overhauling the personal independence payment (Pip) until the end of a long review promised as part of the welfare benefits U-turn. But it is committed to reforming special educational needs and disabilities (Send) provision in schools in England and, for ministers, this has been seen as the next potential flashpoint. Because the plans are driven in part by the need to contain soaring costs, parents fear they may lose out, and so the risk of a Labour rebellion has been a considerable.
This explainer by Patrick Butler sets out why change is needed.
And, as Jessica Elgot explains in our overnight splash, although the full details are being published today, the government has already said quite a lot about what the plans will involve – and announced a £4bn investment over three years.
So far, Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, seems to have done a good job at keeping Labour MPs onside. When Liz Kendall announced the Pip reforms last year, there were immediate objections from the PLP. As Jess reports, that has not happened this time.
The long-delayed proposals to transform Send in schools in England have resulted in a major listening drive led by Phillipson to try to smooth their landing with parents, and with MPs, many of whom had previously said they were prepared to rebel on the proposals.
MPs who had been wary of the reforms told the Guardian they were privately optimistic that concerns had been heard and the vast majority of cases, especially poorer children, would receive improved provision, though they cautioned that detail may yet emerge in the full white paper to throw that into doubt.
But it is only today that we have learned how much extra money the government is going to invest in Send, and already the debate has started as to whether £4bn over three years is or isn’t a lot of money.
Luke Sibieta from the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank, said this funding increase was a “reasonably significant change”, the BBC reports.
But Matt Wrack, general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, said:
While increased early support for Send is welcome, years of underfunding and diminished external services mean that this new funding is barely a drop in the bucket of the investment necessary to drive real improvement in schools.
£1.6bn over three years may sound like a lot of money, but it equates to just a few thousand pounds per setting. It is absolutely ridiculous to suggest that Send provision can be adequately overhauled with this low level of funding, or that the associated workloads for teachers could be in any way offset by throwing a bit of money in their general direction.
As Jess reports in the Guardian story, “the funding is likely to be the equivalent of about £20,000-£40,000 a year for primary schools and about £50,000-£70,000 for secondary schools”.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10.30am: Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, gives a speech in Peterborough on her Send reforms and her schools white paper.
Morning: Keir Starmer is hosting a round table event relating to the Send reforms.
11am: The Department for Education is expected to publish the schools white paper.
Morning: Kemi Badenoch is on a visit in London, promoting the Conservative party’s New Deal for Young People plans. She will also be interviewed on Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine show.
11am: Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson, gives a speech in Dover on his plans to cut immigration and fight crime.
2.30pm: Steve Reed, the housing secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
3.30pm: Ministers are expected to respond to urgent questions. The speaker will decide what UQs to grant but, with the Commons sitting for the first time since a one-week recess, there could be UQs or ministerial statements on various topics including the Chagos Islands, Iran, Donald Trump’s tariffs and the royal line of succession.
Afternoon: Phillipson will make a statement to MPs about the Send reforms after the UQs.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (between 10am and 3pm), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
Key events
Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, has been speaking about the Send reforms at an event in Peterborough.
This is what she said about the need for inclusion.
Inclusion is a choice. It is an educational choice, and it is also a political choice because we could duck this challenge, ignore the injustice of a postcode lottery in life chances putting off fixing the Send system yet again.
The system works well for some at least.
[But] that’s just not good enough. Our moment calls for courage because before us [there is a] once in a generation chance for change.
Council for Disabled Children, representing Send sector, welcomes ‘scale of vision’ in government’s plans
Richard Adams
Richard Adams is the Guardian’s education editor.
The details of the government’s Send reforms have been supported by the Council for Disabled Children, an important umbrella body for the special needs sector with a membership of over 300 voluntary and community organisations.
Amanda Allard, director of the council, said:
We welcome the scale of vision contained in the white paper which has the potential to create an education system that fully values children and young people with additional needs and their families.
We also welcome the commitment to retain statutory education, health and care plans (EHCPs) for children and young people whose needs cannot be met through this new model. We know that many parents will welcome the legal requirement for schools to create individual support plans (ISPs) for all children with Send.
At the same time we know they will be concerned to understand how accountability will work. The consultation launched today is an opportunity to clarify those details, ensuring families have clear routes to action where these ambitions are not being delivered.
About 270,000 fewer children in England to get EHCPs under Send overhaul
Hundreds of thousands fewer children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send) will be given education, health and care plans (EHCPs) as a result of long-awaited changes announced by the education secretary this morning, Kiran Stacey reports.
Here is Kiran’s story.
And here is an extract.
Bridget Phillipson has outlined her plans to overhaul Send provision in England, under which only those children with particularly severe or complex needs will be given EHCPs.
Millions of children will be given new individual support plans (ISPs) – a more low-key set of measures to be agreed with schools which could include access to psychologists and therapists, as well as access to “inclusion bases” within schools.
The changes are designed to stem a rapid rise in the number of children being given EHCPs, which has caused a multibillion-pound hole in local authority finances.
Government modelling shows the number of EHCPs are forecast to fall rapidly after the new system comes in, from a peak of nearly 8% of pupils in 2029-30 to under 5% by 2034-35 – a drop of 270,000 if pupil numbers remain stable.
At the end of last week the Times ran a story ahead of the publication of today’s Send reform saying a council had spent “nearly £20,000 a year for a single child to receive horse therapy to help with their special educational needs”. This prompted an angry response from people with direct experience of special needs, including my colleague John Harris, who described the story as ignorant and who said the author should “google ‘riding’ and ‘disabled’ … [and] discover the importance of posture and core stability to many Send”.
Georgia Gould, the education minister, was asked about the story in an interview with Times Radio this morning. Without commenting in detail, she declined to criticise horse therapy in principle. She said:
We’re not going to ban any type of provision that a school wants to put in place, but we are going to ensure that there is consistent provision around the country. At the moment, it’s a massive postcode lottery. Some children are getting far more than others, and we want to make sure there is consistent, good quality provision.
NAHT school leaders’ union welcomes £4bn extra funding for Send provision as ‘significant’
The NASUWT has criticised the amount of money being allocated by the government to support its Send reforms. (See 9.36am.) But the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) has been more positive. This is from its general secretary, Paul Whiteman.
We believe the government’s approach of looking at the whole child, from birth to adulthood, is the right one, with a focus on early intervention, local provision, inclusion of pupils within mainstream settings where appropriate, and collaboration with external services like social care and health.
Crucially, the success or failure of these plans relies on there being sufficient funding – and on the availability of support services.
The money announced is significant, and it is good that it is largely aimed directly at schools. We will now be looking closely at the details and speaking to school leaders across the country to assess the viability of the proposals and whether the investment is enough.
Starmer says ‘inclusion works’, arguing some Send pupils will do better in mainstream than in special schools
One of the most memorable moments of the 2010 general election came when David Cameron was confronted by a parent and activist who accused the Tory leader of being opposed to disabled children being included in mainstream schools. Cameron insisted that he was not opposed to inclusion, but that he wanted to stop the closure of special needs.
Sixteen years later, Keir Starmer is now actively promoting inclusion. In his Times article, Starmer says:
[The current Send] system that works for nobody. It forces parents into a grinding, adversarial fight to get “one size fits all” support. It encourages private equity vultures to rip off the taxpayer by charging up to five times more for a precious special school place. Meanwhile, for so many children it simply writes off their potential. Insisting, against all evidence, that they could not thrive in a supported and inclusive mainstream school.
We should be crystal clear on this last point: inclusion works. Not for every kid – of course some children need extra support in a specialist institution. That’s why today we are investing in 60,000 extra specialist places.
Nonetheless, the evidence shows that pupils in a mainstream setting achieve around half a grade higher in GCSE English and maths than similar pupils in special schools.
And so we are also investing heavily in inclusion – in teacher training, early intervention, extra teaching assistants, and above all, in Send support that is quicker and more personalised to an individual child’s needs.
IFS says extra Send money for schools amounts to ‘reasonably significant change’
Richard Adams
Richard Adams is the Guardian’s education editor.
Here is the full quote from Luke Sibieta of the Institute for Fiscal Studies on the Send reform plans as announced overnight. (See 9.50am.)
The government is proposing a major set of reforms, with more funding and support provided upfront through mainstream schools– as already happens in Scotland and Wales. To enable this change, the government will provide about £1bn per year to mainstream schools and local authorities to deliver more support and specialist services. This is a reasonably significant change, considering that extra Send funding for mainstream schools and local authority support services currently totals about £5bn per year. The government will be hoping that more upfront support and early intervention saves them money by reducing the need for expensive support currently provided through education, health and careplans (EHCPs).
Reform will be a long and complicated process. If mainstream schools are to play a bigger role, how can we be sure they make decisions in a consistent and fair way? A new funding system will be needed to ensure resources are targeted across schools to where they are needed. There will need to be a plan to upskill and expand the workforce to ensure mainstream schools can play an expanded role. The government will need to manage the transition carefully to ensure minimal disruption to existing support for pupils. More focus on outcomes will also be needed to improve quality.
Starmer says his determination to improve Send driven in part by memory of his brother Nick who had difficulties learning
Keir Starmer has been talking about his brother Nick, who died in 2024, a lot in recent weeks (eg here and here). And he has made similar points in an article in the Times today where he says that his determination to improve Send provision is in part driven by his memory of his brother. He says:
My father always used to say: “Nick has achieved just as much as you, Keir.” It was a pointed observation. Like so many working-class children of my generation, I was the first in my family to go to university. And for families like ours, there is deep pride in that. Inevitably, you get put on a pedestal.
But my dad was right. I believed him then and I believe him just as strongly now. Because I saw how much Nick had to fight every day just to be seen. To count. To be recognised by an education system that never had any expectations for him because he had difficulties learning.
And Nick did fight. Taught by my mum, he defied those who told him he would never be able to read. Abandoned by the traditional education system, he went to college to get technical qualifications. He ignored the name-callers, the doubters, the people who prefer to look away, and he grafted, just as much as I have, every single day. And so I feel an immense personal sadness that, in the end, he did not quite achieve the level of basic comfort in his life that my parents and I wanted for him.
Starmer often talks about his brother having “difficulties with learning” rather than “learning difficulties”, a term used by educationalists today (which is not the same as a learning disability, even though the two concepts are often confused). In his biography of Starmer, Tom Baldwin says Nick “suffered complications during his birth and subsequently had some fairly severe difficulties with learning”. Starmer has not said what, if any, formal assessments were made of Nick’s disability (it has more than half a century ago, and support for special needs was much more basic then), but it seems likely that, if he were a child today, Nick would have an EHCP (educational health and care plan) under the Send system being reformed by the government.
But the Send reforms are just part of a schools white paper being published today, and in his article Starmer also suggests Nick’s experience at school helps to explain why he is so committed to reform opportunities for children who might not be suited to university.
I want this country to see and value the contribution every single person can make.
It’s a cause that can only start with an education system grounded in those same values. I should be clear – Britain has come a long way since the Seventies and Eighties. For all our problems, we do have a more inclusive and tolerant society. Our schools have improved markedly, under both Labour and Conservative governments. But not for every child.
Not for the white working-class kids, who now get some of the worst grades of any social group. Not for the kids whose gifts lie in their hands and want a good quality apprenticeship in their community. And not for the children who face that same battle Nick faced just to be seen as deserving of educational excellence.
Reform UK talk a lot about white working class children being neglected by the education system, and this is a point its candidate, Matt Goodwin, has raised in the Gorton and Denton byelection.
What DfE says about how it will spend £4bn improving Send provision
Here is the Department for Education’s news release from overnight about the Send reforms.
And this is what it says about how it will spend £4bn improving Send provision in English schools,
To dramatically improve the support mainstream schools can provide for children with SEND, and rebuild families’ confidence in the system, the government will:
-[NEW] Provide £1.6 bn over three years across every early years setting, school and post-16 setting, equating to thousands of pounds extra every year on top of existing core SEND funding, to run targeted and small group interventions at the earliest signs of children having additional needs
-[NEW] Invest £1.8 bn over three years for “Experts at Hand”:
Every council working with Integrated Care Boards and health board will commission local professionals – educational psychology, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy and more – so they are routinely available in every area, whether or not children have an EHCP
Special and alternative provision schools to provide expert training, direct interventions with children and short-term placements in their schools
Once rolled out an average secondary school will receive over 160 days – around an additional full school year – worth of dedicated specialist time every year
-[NEW] Invest over £200m so every community’s Best Start Family Hub provides a dedicated SEND outreach and support offer.
-[NEW] Invest £200m to ensure all local authorities can transform how they operate in line with our reforms while maintaining current SEND services
-Train every teacher to be a teacher of children with SEND, with the biggest SEND training offer ever seen in English schools – backed by £200m – and a new requirement for all teachers to be trained to support children with SEND.
-Create 60,000 new places for children with SEND, including the 10,000 places already delivered, backed by investment of over £3.7bn.
Taken together, from the foundations of local family outreach and teacher training, up to today’s investment in expert classroom support, the government is building a SEND system unrecognisable from the one families experience today.
Teaching unions dismiss £4bn pledged for Send overhaul as ‘drop in bucket’
Good morning. Of all the government U-turns performed by Labour so far, it is arguable that the most serious was the decision to shelve plans to restrict some disability welfare payments. The U-turn left a £5bn hole in the government finances, but the controversy also massively damaged the government’s relations with disabled people and those who care about them, as well as raising doubts about whether it would ever have the ability to implement welfare-related reforms that might be unpopular with Labour MPs nervous about cost cutting.
The government is not to going to return to the issue of overhauling the personal independence payment (Pip) until the end of a long review promised as part of the welfare benefits U-turn. But it is committed to reforming special educational needs and disabilities (Send) provision in schools in England and, for ministers, this has been seen as the next potential flashpoint. Because the plans are driven in part by the need to contain soaring costs, parents fear they may lose out, and so the risk of a Labour rebellion has been a considerable.
This explainer by Patrick Butler sets out why change is needed.
And, as Jessica Elgot explains in our overnight splash, although the full details are being published today, the government has already said quite a lot about what the plans will involve – and announced a £4bn investment over three years.
So far, Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, seems to have done a good job at keeping Labour MPs onside. When Liz Kendall announced the Pip reforms last year, there were immediate objections from the PLP. As Jess reports, that has not happened this time.
The long-delayed proposals to transform Send in schools in England have resulted in a major listening drive led by Phillipson to try to smooth their landing with parents, and with MPs, many of whom had previously said they were prepared to rebel on the proposals.
MPs who had been wary of the reforms told the Guardian they were privately optimistic that concerns had been heard and the vast majority of cases, especially poorer children, would receive improved provision, though they cautioned that detail may yet emerge in the full white paper to throw that into doubt.
But it is only today that we have learned how much extra money the government is going to invest in Send, and already the debate has started as to whether £4bn over three years is or isn’t a lot of money.
Luke Sibieta from the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank, said this funding increase was a “reasonably significant change”, the BBC reports.
But Matt Wrack, general secretary of the NASUWT teaching union, said:
While increased early support for Send is welcome, years of underfunding and diminished external services mean that this new funding is barely a drop in the bucket of the investment necessary to drive real improvement in schools.
£1.6bn over three years may sound like a lot of money, but it equates to just a few thousand pounds per setting. It is absolutely ridiculous to suggest that Send provision can be adequately overhauled with this low level of funding, or that the associated workloads for teachers could be in any way offset by throwing a bit of money in their general direction.
As Jess reports in the Guardian story, “the funding is likely to be the equivalent of about £20,000-£40,000 a year for primary schools and about £50,000-£70,000 for secondary schools”.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10.30am: Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, gives a speech in Peterborough on her Send reforms and her schools white paper.
Morning: Keir Starmer is hosting a round table event relating to the Send reforms.
11am: The Department for Education is expected to publish the schools white paper.
Morning: Kemi Badenoch is on a visit in London, promoting the Conservative party’s New Deal for Young People plans. She will also be interviewed on Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine show.
11am: Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson, gives a speech in Dover on his plans to cut immigration and fight crime.
2.30pm: Steve Reed, the housing secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
3.30pm: Ministers are expected to respond to urgent questions. The speaker will decide what UQs to grant but, with the Commons sitting for the first time since a one-week recess, there could be UQs or ministerial statements on various topics including the Chagos Islands, Iran, Donald Trump’s tariffs and the royal line of succession.
Afternoon: Phillipson will make a statement to MPs about the Send reforms after the UQs.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (between 10am and 3pm), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
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