What’s at stake in special educational needs reform

A campaign – backed by celebrities including actress Sally Phillips and broadcaster Chris Packham as well as MPs – is calling on the government not to scrap or reduce education, health and care plans (EHCPs).

These provide legally binding extra support for children with special educational needs. There are fears that this will be a change outlined in a forthcoming policy paper on schools.

The pressure point for the government is how much it costs. At the moment, EHCP costs come from local authority budgets, which are too low to cover them. A significant rise in EHCPs meant that councils are racking up a cumulative deficit in the billions. From 2028, these costs will be managed by the central government budget.

Mainstream schools in England currently provide what’s called “universal provision”. This is standard support for all pupils, funded by the Department for Education.

If a child needs extra help, schools must offer targeted interventions and resources to remove barriers to learning. This comes from a local authority managed notional special educational needs budget of up to £6,000 per pupil.

If progress still isn’t happening, families can request an EHCP. This unlocks additional funding from (currently) the local authority. It can be used to pay for specialist teaching, equipment, or extra staff, or for alternative provision – education in a specialist school.

Not enough money and bureaucratic delays

The system has been in real need of reform for a good while now.

Waiting times for EHCP assessments are often painfully long. Some families say they feel treated as though they are an inconvenience. Many are fighting legal battles for support: if an EHCP is denied, this can be appealed at a tribunal, where parents are usually successful.

Without the right resources in schools to meet the needs of the children they educate, teachers say they are exhausted. Sencos – teachers in mainstream schools with the overview of special educational needs, and the people holding the fragile system together – report feeling overwhelmed and undervalued. This is not sustainable, but it can be changed.

Under the current funding system, most of the increased costs come from funding special school placements, rather than on inclusive education in mainstream classrooms. The government’s December 2025 announcement of a funding investment to create 60,000 specialist placements in mainstream schools is welcome.

To make special educational needs and disabilities provision fair and effective, better management of budgets at both national and local levels, stronger leadership in schools through a properly resourced Senco role, and comprehensive training for all teachers to support inclusion is needed.

The government has recently announced £200 million to be spent on teacher training to create a “truly inclusive education system”. This very welcome investment marks a significant shift: it recognises that inclusion cannot be achieved through structural reform alone.

It requires a confident, well‑trained workforce able to meet diverse needs early and effectively. If delivered at scale and with fidelity, this could begin to rebalance the system. It would reduce dependence on EHCPs by strengthening universal and targeted provision, and easing the need for specialist placements.

EHCPs are far from perfect, but they cannot disappear overnight without reforms that place inclusion in the heart of universal education provision with statutory protection.

However, once the system is gradually robust enough, EHCPs will be needed less and less.

Without these reforms, families will continue to fight for support without knowing whether this is the best way to have their children’s needs met. Schools will feel pressured to move pupils out of mainstream settings, and costs will continue to rise.

What works

Investment in strong local provision and workforce development can reduce reliance on expensive independent placements, improve outcomes and restore trust between families and schools.

In Kirklees, Yorkshire, schools, families and communities are encouraged to engage in mutual support and shared learning to foster collective responsibility.

Some local authorities are demonstrating what reform can look like. Haringey’s Send and Inclusion Improvement Plan (2024–2025) is built on five priorities: early intervention, meeting needs locally, providing choice, working together with families, and preparing children for adulthood.

Providing early, expert support for the 800,000 UK children with lifelong speech and language challenges would transform lives and save £8 billion annually, according to the Disabled Children’s Partnership and the Speech, Language and Communication Alliance.

Universities need to be involved more than ever, equipping teachers and Sencos with neurodiversity-friendly and dyslexia-friendly research and training interweaved in mainstream, holistic instruction that can continue through in-service training and professional development opportunities.

We’ve seen that children are being placed in costly independent schools with their fees paid by the state. Many are owned by private equity firms that have turned special education into a lucrative business. This is draining public funds at an unsustainable rate, while outcomes for pupils remain stubbornly poor.

The question now is whether the government will be brave enough to overhaul a system that has become both inefficient and inequitable, and deliver sustainable reforms, beyond one-off package funds, prioritising inclusion and early support over bureaucracy and profit.

Paty Paliokosta does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.