ENGLAND: With bankrupting SPED costs, ed secretary calls for mainstreaming disabled students

May 21, 2025,Times: Labour plans to fix special needs system with more inclusive schools

Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, intends for more children to be taught in mainstream schools to address absenteeism and spiralling costs

More special needs children will be educated alongside mainstream pupils under planned reforms by the education secretary.

Bridget Phillipson is preparing to overhaul the “broken” special educational needs (SEN) system because of the impact of poor behaviour and absence on all children in the classroom, and there are concerns about spiralling costs.

The government’s white paper on special educational needs will come months after it set up an expert group on school inclusion and appointed a strategic adviser.

Next month’s comprehensive spending review is likely to demand belt-tightening from government departments and experts warn the SEN system as it stands is financially unsustainable, costing £12 billion in England, an increase of £4 billion since 2015.

More than half of English local authorities could be driven to bankruptcy next year, in part by special needs budgets, and a backlog of families are waiting for help, with about half unable to get care plans for their children within the 20-week statutory deadline.

The number of school children with special needs has increased by 24.9 per cent since 2016 while those obtaining education health and care plans (EHCP) — a legal document detailing their entitlement — has risen by 83 per cent. Schools are struggling to cope with pupils with complex needs, leading to rising exclusions and suspensions for those who are not given extra help, plus disruption for other pupils.

Inclusion will be achieved through more specialist support in the classroom or the creation of separate SEN provision in mainstream schools under the proposals, although children with the highest needs will remain at special schools.

SEN arrangements, which are provided by schools, could include speech therapy, extra help from a teacher or assistant or the option to work in a smaller group.

There are 1.6 million children with special needs in England. The government is yet to confirm how many will be educated in mainstream schools.

The number of children at specialist schools has grown to 157,000, up from 105,000 ten years ago.

The recent growth in demand for special needs support across all schools has partly been as a result of greater diagnoses of ADHD and mental health conditions, and experts believe more of these children could be taught with support in mainstream schools.

Phillipson has visited state schools successfully integrating children with autism, learning difficulties and other complex needs.

The education secretary has described the current system as broken. She told headteachers in March about the need to “think very differently” about special needs funding, but any attempt to change support is likely to cause an outcry from families.

Her advisers believe reform is needed not only to help children with special needs but also because of disruption to standards and behaviour in classrooms.

Some children with special needs are almost four times more likely to be suspended than other classmates. The latest government figures show children with no special needs had a suspension rate of 2.36 per 100 pupils, for those with an education health and care plan it was 7.74, and for those with special educational needs but no plan it was 9.

Permanent exclusions were also far higher at 2 per 10,000 for children with no special needs, 8 per 10,000 for those with an EHCP and 12 for those with special needs support but no plan.

The overall absence rate in 2023-24 was 6.3 per cent for children without special needs, 10.2 per cent for those with SEN support but no care plan and 12.6 per cent for those with a plan. Persistent absence — missing at least a day a fortnight — was twice as high among those with plans (a 35.5 per cent absence rate) as those with no special needs (16.8 per cent), while those with special needs support but no plan had a rate of 30.1 per cent.

One source close to the government said major reform was needed because the special educational needs crisis affected every child. Phillipson is “plotting a course for more inclusive mainstream schools”, the source said.

Families often need to spend thousands of pounds of their own money taking legal action to force councils to provide EHCPs, and most appeals against initial refusals are successful. Councils face an estimated high needs budget deficit of £5 billion by 2026.

An accounting override has allowed these deficits to sit off balance sheets, but this is due to end next year, and more than half of councils have warned that they face insolvency.

Much of the current cost comes from sending children to private special needs schools, which can charge fees of more than £100,000 a year, and from transport taking children to schools that are sometimes miles away.

Hundreds of independent special schools have opened over the past five years and local authorities now spending £1.8 billion a year on the sector. Analysis carried out by The House magazine found that some private providers were charging local authorities up to £350,000 per child per year for residential schools and £133,000 for a day pupil with special educational needs or disabilities.

These schools are subject to Labour’s imposition of VAT on fees for children whose placements are not covered by EHCPs, which has caused uncertainty about the sustainability of such institutions.

Jason Elsom, chief executive of the charity Parentkind, said: “Reforming the special educational needs system is an urgent priority for millions of parents. This is a crisis decades in the making. It’s not a new problem, but it demands immediate action.” . . .

The borough of Barking & Dagenham in east London decided ten years ago to save millions of pounds by creating inclusion units within mainstream primary and secondary schools.

Pupils with moderate to severe learning difficulties can attend their local school and mix with the wider school community, for example at lunch times and assemblies or PE, dance or music lessons.

This year Becontree was rated as a centre of excellence for inclusion because of its “additional resource provision” (ARP), developed in partnership with the council.

But this unit is full so it has had to create its own in-school provision, called Zen Dens, for children who cannot be in mainstream classes full-time and need very close monitoring. . . .

The ARP is also part of the main school building but with secure entry and exit. It was set up by the local authority and is run by the school, has several classrooms, some with sofas, rugs and play sand, and two outdoor play areas with a range of equipment including a small trampoline and climbing apparatus.

All its pupils have autism and some have other diagnoses as well. Their learning throughout the school day is individually tailored to their needs. Some also spend time in their age-group classrooms, based on their abilities, with support from a multi-disciplinary team including highly trained staff, educational psychologists and speech and language therapists. One child who left last year spent more time with his age-group class than the ARP.

Marie Ziane, the headteacher, said increasing numbers of children were coming into school with complex needs, particularly relating to communication and autism. . . .

Asked what the impact would be on the rest of the school if the ARP and Zen Dens didn’t exist, Ziane says: “It wouldn’t allow us to be able to deliver the curriculum that those children require and also focus on children who are in mainstream.”

Of the ARP, she adds: “Without the resources, qualified staff, expertise, equipment, access to therapists and to other services, we couldn’t achieve what we achieve with our children.”

Barking & Dagenham council says it successfully avoided projected overspending of £12 million within five to six years because of the new system, adopted in 2013-14.

The number of children and young people placed in independent and non-maintained special schools almost halved within five years. The number of children in ARPs in mainstream schools grew from about 180 in 2014-15 to 450 in 2023.

The council was one of only a few in England not to overspend on its high needs block allocation in 2022-23.