England: SPED reform: "The system is in crisis"; hundreds wait over a year for SPED plan

June 16, 2025, Farrer &Co: Proposed reforms to SEN support in England: what schools need to know 

The UK Government is considering major reforms to the system that supports children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) in England. These potential changes have sparked concern among educators, parents, and advocacy groups, particularly around the future of Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) – a cornerstone of legal protection for children with SEND.

What are EHCPs?

EHCPs are legally binding documents prepared by the local authority that set out a child’s special educational needs, detail the support they need, what outcomes they would like to achieve and identify the “named school”, ie where the child will attend. The local authority is legally responsible for funding or directly providing all the support identified in an EHCP. This includes covering the costs of any school fees for the “named school”.

EHCPs are designed to ensure that children with SEND receive the tailored assistance they need to access education on an equal footing with their peers.

Currently, over 500,000 children in England have an EHCP. These plans are critical for securing additional funding, specialist teaching, and access to therapies or equipment. Importantly, they also provide families with a legal route to challenge the local authority if support is denied or withdrawn.

The system, however, is in crisis.

Only half of new EHCPs were issued on time last year.

Hundreds of families waited over a year for their child to be issued an EHCP.

Parents brought over 21,000 appeals to the First Tier Tribunal (the Tribunal that presides over SEND issues) either challenging a local authority’s refusal to assess a child for an EHCP or to issue one or disputing the content of an EHCP. Families win in 95% of cases.

A number of local councils (which fund these plans) are running at extraordinary deficits of £100m or more, and the National Audit Office has described the current system as financially unsustainable.

Schools can find themselves caught in the middle, seeking to support a child with high needs who has – for whatever reason – been unable to access what they need from the local authority or who is waiting for this support to be agreed and provided. These situations can often put the parents and school in conflict, for example, when the parents demand or assume that whatever is being sought in the EHCP should be delivered by the school in the meantime, or where there are disagreements about the feasibility or suitability of the school itself. Where the child is disabled, the school must also ensure it does not discriminate against the child and that it proactively puts reasonable adjustments in place for them.

What is the Government proposing?

The previous government looked at the SEND system and started consultations on some reforms, including introducing standardised EHCPs and trying to streamline the system.

This Government appears to be going further. While no formal policy has been announced, recent statements from ministers suggest that the government is exploring alternatives to the current EHCP system. In a parliamentary session, Minister for School Standards Catherine McKinnell confirmed that officials are working on a new model of SEND support.

She refused to rule out significantly narrowing the scope of EHCPs or replacing them altogether.

The Government argues that the current system is overly adversarial and bureaucratic, often forcing families into legal disputes with local authorities in order to secure basic support. The aim of the reforms, according to McKinnell, is to provide “better support for children at the earliest stage possible” and reduce the need for formal plans.

Critics have warned that removing EHCPs could strip children of their legal right to support and lead to children with SEND being pushed out of mainstream education into alternative provision or home schooling if they cannot access the support they need.

What does this mean for schools?

It is, of course, difficult to predict what impact these reforms may have on schools, but if EHCPs are significantly restructured or indeed replaced, schools may be expected to provide more support (and from an earlier stage) without the backing of a formal plan or, depending on how the reforms pan out, limited or no financial support from the local authority.

If local authority support is weakened or reduced, parents could look to the independent sector (which they may perceive as better placed to meet their child’s needs than mainstream settings) and/or invoke equality legislation to argue for more extensive support from schools directly.

The Government may, as part of these reforms, increase or redirect funding to schemes and programmes to support schools with early interventions for SEND children (like the recently bolstered Early Language Support for Every Child programme). However, there is a question mark over whether such programmes will be available to all schools, ie special and independent, and not just the maintained sector.

The possible shift in focus from the local authority to the school, plus the possible reduction in external local authority funded assessments, would likely increase pressure and burden on internal SENCOs and staff to identify need and support students who may have extensive, complex and/or specialist needs.

While the goal of improving early support and trying to address the shortcomings of the EHCP system is commendable, any move to reduce legal protections must be carefully scrutinised. Schools and education providers play a vital role in shaping the future of SEND provision and will, naturally, remain the bodies “delivering” support and, in practice,

addressing immediate need. We must wait to see how the Government’s proposals shape up to better understand whether they will help or hinder effective SEND provision for young people and what the impact on schools will be in all this.