The government is to invest £3bn in creating bespoke places within local state schools for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (Send), a crucial part of its efforts to grapple with England’s rising numbers of children facing social and mental health problems.
The plan announced by Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, to create up to 60,000 places within mainstream schools, will be partly funded by the suspension of a group of planned free schools, saving an estimated £600m in the coming years. The remaining £2.4bn will come from departmental spending outlined in November’s budget.
Phillipson said: “This government will fix the broken education system for children and young people with Send by making sure that their local school is also the right school.
“Ahead of our reforms next year, we’re laying the foundations of a new system that shifts children with Send from forgotten to included and earns the confidence of parents.
“This £3bn investment will transform lives. It will open the door to opportunity for tens of thousands of children with Send, giving them the chance to learn, belong and succeed in their local community.”
The urgent need for change was highlighted by figures showing that legal action by parents over their children’s special needs provision have continued to soar. The Ministry of Justice said the number of Send appeals heard by tribunals rose for the ninth year in a row to 25,002 in 2024-25, an 18% increase on the previous year.
The Department for Education (DfE) is working on reforms to be included in the schools white paper planned for early next year, with the schools minister, Georgia Gould, advisers and DfE officials conducting regional and online forums to gauge responses from parents, charities and school leaders.
One of the DfE’s main principles is that children with special needs should be able to attend local schools alongside their peers, rather than having to travel long distances to find suitable provision.
The DfE said its announcement would “lay the groundwork for significant future reform of the Send support system, helping to make schools inclusive by design”, with the white paper to detail how schools will be funded to support the specialist places.
Gould said the white paper would look at “every aspect of the school system”, including issues such as behaviour and the high proportion of pupils with special needs who are suspended or excluded, while maintaining the important role of special schools for children with complex needs.
About 460,000 children and young people in England have special needs provision through education, health and care plans (EHCPs), a legal document agreed between local authorities and families. But many find the EHCP process complicated and bureaucratic, forcing increasing numbers to appeal through specialist Send tribunals to modify or enforce their agreements with councils.
The figures from the Ministry of Justice show that the number of registered appeals heard by the tribunals rocketed from just over 3,100 a decade ago to 25,002 in the last school year. The backlog has continued to grow, with 15,000 open cases recorded in September.
Of the cases decided by the tribunal, 99% were found in favour of the appealing families.
Madeleine Cassidy, the chief executive of the Independent Provider of Special Education Advice, a charity that focuses on England’s special needs laws, said: “[The figures] expose the scale of unlawful decision-making in local authorities. Children and young people with Send are still being routinely denied the educational provision to which they are legally entitled. This is a systemic failure, and one that must be addressed in next year’s white paper.”
Some of the new funding comes at the expense of free schools that were in the pipeline, including a Middlesbrough sixth form to be opened in a collaboration between Eton college and the Star academy chain. But two other sixth forms planned by the group, in Dudley and Oldham, will go ahead.
The 60,000 special needs places include 10,000 included in special schools within the free school projects paused by the DfE. The department said just 15 special and alternative provision (AP) free schools would continue as planned but local authorities would be given the option to complete the remaining 77 projects or receive equivalent funding to deliver Send places.
Meg Powell-Chandler, the director of the New Schools Network, said: “We regret the decision to cancel a number of projects, and remain concerned that uncertainty persists for 77 vital special and AP free school proposals that would provide much-needed, high-quality specialist places.”
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