(UK) Kent: Doubts over special ed reforms

Feb 23, 2026, Kent Online: Government SEND school reforms ‘too little, too late’ for Kent’s special needs children

The government’s planned overhaul of special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) provision has been met with scepticism in Kent.

Education secretary Bridget Phillipson says that a £4bn investment to make every mainstream school “truly inclusive and transform the outcomes for children with SEND”.

The Department for Education, fronted by Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, will put £4bn investment into reforming SEND provision. Picture: Lucy North/PA

But one mother of two children with complex needs cast doubt on whether the reforms will work in practice and accused the Labour administration of failing to listen to parents.

The government aims to reserve education, health and care plans (EHCPs) - binding legal contracts to guarantee parents extra help for their children - to youngsters with the severest needs.

In recent years, the cost of SEND to Kent County Council (KCC) has risen sharply while the number of ECHPs has been higher than other parts of the country.

The Department for Education hopes the changes will help the government “manage the costs of delivering an expensive part of the system”.

Carers of 300-plus children to receive new weekly allowanceCarers of 300-plus children to receive new weekly allowance

In future SEND pupils will fall into two support levels - targeted and specialist.

The former will apply to all children in mainstream schools and the latter for those with the most complex needs.

But SEND campaigner Lisa Lloyd has her doubts about how this will work in practice.

“I'd like to know who's going to be deciding who has more severe needs than another child because obviously children with disabilities and learning difficulties and things like that all have very, very different needs and it's not a scale of mild to severe,” she explained.

“I do think that obviously mainstreams do need to have better SEND provisions in them, which is a good thing, but this shouldn't be instead of SEND schools and they should not be taking away EHCPs from children for them to have a SEND provision within a mainstream.

“It should be alongside the EHCPs and that's where it would work best with the best support for these children.”

The mum-of-two also has reservations over the figure announced today and whether it will scratch the surface when it comes to tackling funding issues.

SEND campaigner Lisa Lloyd is worried about the potential knock on effects of the government’s SEND overhaul

“The £4 billion sounds like a lot, but when you actually spread it out across all the schools, it's actually quite a small amount,” she added.

“I don't know how they plan to provide this amount of training to teachers who are already overworked and underpaid.

“So I don't know how they're going to be able to take on this level of training on top of what they already do. I think removing EHCPs is not going to ease any pressure for families at all.

“In fact, I think it's going to create a lot more pressure.”

She fears this could have a huge knock-on effect where more parents are “forced” into home educating because there's going to be more children that become “emotional-based school avoiders”.

Liberal Democrat KCC opposition leader Cllr Antony Hook said “watering down” the EHCP rights will not meet the needs of children or address the costs to the council.

Mother-of-two Katrina Crowhurst, who lives in Medway but has a son attending a special school in the KCC catchment, worries the announcement is “too little, too late”.

She said: “SEND is such a huge umbrella and it’s almost impossible to do the things the government wants to do but I don’t believe the parents’ views are being listened to.”

Katrina Crowhurst thinks the government reforms are "too little, too late"

Mrs Crowhurst doubts mainstream schools can be "truly inclusive” and meet the complex needs of SEND children.

She added: “Having inclusive units in schools is all well and good, and about time too, but will they just be a bit of an add on? A bit of an after-thought?

“There needs to be a lot of thought given to the physical environment, the number of pupils, the noise and routine of mainstream schools.

“It’s probably too little too late because the system overall needs a total overhaul.”

Children who have been awarded an EHCP will keep it until they reach the next stage of their education, but they will be reassessed from 2029.

One of the main costs in Kent’s SEND provision is the cost of the high needs block (HNB) which was costing more than £300m [$400M] in 2024-25.

One consequence of EHCPs is that some children are entitled to free home to school transport which was estimated to be costing Kent nearly £100m [$134M] annually when Reform UK came into office last May.

This figure has since been pegged back through measures such as renegotiating contracts and streamlining services.

The government has already pledged to help councils with SEND overspends although KCC will still have to manage the system day to day until local government in reorganised, possibly as soon as 2028.

In March last year there were 21,000 pupils with EHCPs and the bill to KCC for assessing and processing applications was £17m [$23M].  . . .

The minister said that there will be efforts and £200m [$269M] to help identify and support children with SEND earlier at special hubs.

Antony Hook, Lib Dem leader of the opposition said: "The government’s £4bn [$5B] announcement is a drop in the ocean compared to the reality we face. Kent County Council is already drowning in a staggering SEND deficit…tweaking spreadsheets and threatening to water down EHCP rights won't fix this fundamentally broken system. . . .

Mrs Phillipson has also set out plans to recruit 6.500 new teachers and all teaching staff will become SEND proficient. There will be 60,000 more SEND places in schools, including 10,000 already delivered. . . .