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ENGLAND: More special needs because of less stigma/overdiagnosis; no real increase

Oct 24, 2024, Times: Special needs bills are bankrupting councils

OP ED


Of the many alarming statistics in the National Audit Office’s report on support for children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send) the most startling is the rise in the number with the most serious level of need. There are 576,000 with an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP), which used to be called “statements”, an increase of 140 per cent over a decade.


You might think this indicates a sharp deterioration in the condition of young people. That does not, however, seem to be what’s driving the numbers upwards. Rather, it’s the result of a change in the law and in the culture surrounding special needs.


Since the Children and Families Act of 2014, parents can ask for their child to have an EHCP. Numbers were flat until the legislation came into force, and took off from 2015 onwards.


Attitudes to special needs have changed. The shame that went with being “statemented” in the past has dissipated, and “neurodiversity” has become an identity rather than a stigma. For parents, such a diagnosis can be both a relief, for it implies that difficult behaviour is innate rather than the consequence of poor parenting, and a help. A child categorised as having Send is likely to get special treatment, for instance to move around the class while others are sitting still or to take more time in exams.

Schools have an incentive to get an EHCP for a pupil. It attracts extra resources while the child is in mainstream education and may also divert the child into a special school. Since the presence of a child with special needs in a mainstream school may make it harder to teach the rest, a departure may improve results.


The increase in special needs education has been driving up costs. Providing for a child with EHCP in a mainstream school costs £19,100 a year [$25K], compared with £7,460 [$9.7K] for other pupils. In a state-run special school the cost is £23,900 [$31K] a year, but rising demand means there aren’t enough places in the state sector, so 9 per cent of children with EHCPs now go to private schools, which cost the state £61,500 [$80K] per child per year.


On top of that, there are the costs of transporting children to and from these schools, which may involve a taxi ride and an accompanying adult. Spending on transport to special schools has almost doubled over the past five years to £1.4 billion [$1.8B]. On average it costs £8,299 [$11K] per child per year. An investigation by the BBC revealed some astonishing individual bills. Buckinghamshire council says it spends £952 [$1.2K] per day on two passengers with complex medical needs.


By law councils have to pay for whatever a plan mandates for a child. The Department for Education covers some but not all of these costs, so the local authority deficit on special needs now totals nearly £3 billion [$3.8B]. Councils are legally required to balance their books, but the government has given them an “override” for these costs — ie, for accounting purposes they can ignore them — which runs out in 2026. A quarter of councils responding to a survey said they would declare bankruptcy within a year without the override and another quarter within three years. The debt is still piling up, even if councils are allowed to pretend it isn’t.


The only control councils have over these costs is by delaying or turning down requests for EHCPs. Only half are granted within the 20 weeks the law stipulates; thousands of families wait more than a year. This tactic doesn’t work for long. When an EHCP is denied, parents have the right to appeal, and in 98 per cent of cases they win. . .

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And is all this expenditure improving things for children with special needs? Not obviously. The only measure of outcomes for them is the proportion of school leavers going into further education, training or employment. It hasn’t budged in five years. It may be that the increase in Send children going to special schools has helped to improve achievement in mainstream schools, but it’s impossible to know.


The system evidently needs reforming (again), with a single body given a budget and the power to allocate it. It is bonkers that councils foot the bill but have no control over it. And it’s mad that we’re spending £2 billion [$2.6B] a year on places in private schools that cost three times what state places cost. We need an increase in state provision. That will save some money, but it’s hard to know how costs can be reduced much.


It’s possible that some of the problem is the result of overdiagnosis. That’s a common view on the right, which tends to regard the rise in mental health issues as a measure of society’s self-indulgence. The left tends to take the view that the need was always there but was suppressed by a system that did not properly care for people.

I suspect those claims are driven by politics, and the data gives no clue as to whether either is correct. What’s clear, though, is that when the government gives people more rights, as it did in the 2014 legislation, resources must be increased commensurately, or the system ends up in a horrible mess. In this, the Send system is an acute instance of a problem that is chronic throughout the public services.





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