I very strongly support this letter signed by 100 very well-informed people in the Guardian today:
The legal rights to an education that meets the needs of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (Send) are under threat. Many thousands of children risk being denied vital provision, or losing access to education altogether.
As new education reforms loom, every sign from the government suggests the right to an education, health and care plan (EHCP) is to be removed from children attending mainstream schools. Local authorities want EHCPs drastically reduced, or removed altogether, to relieve them of duties they often find costly and troublesome.
About 85% of children with Send are educated in mainstream settings. Over 270,000 of these children have EHCPs. These legally enforceable documents detail a child or young person's needs, and the support to enable them to fulfil their individual potential. EHCPs allow children and young people with all kinds of disabilities to receive an education.
Without statutory support, underpinned by necessary extra resources for schools, it's extremely unlikely that ministers will achieve their aim of more children with Send thriving, or even surviving, in mainstream education. A reduction or complete snatching-away of EHCPs in mainstream education wouldn't mean their needs magically vanish. It would, instead, increase applications for already overcrowded special schools or mean they would be forced out of school altogether.
We believe the public are on our side, and we support the newly launched Save Our Children's Rights (SOCR) campaign led by Special Needs Jungle, IPSEA and others. This campaign is calling for EHCPs to be retained, now and in the future. SOCR's recent petition reflecting this aim rapidly passed 100,000 signatures, meaning the issue will be considered for a parliamentary debate, and is still growing.
For more than 40 years, children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities have had a statutory right to an education that meets their needs. Set alongside catastrophic plans to cut benefits for disabled people, this raises the question of who we are as a country and the kind of society in which we want to live. Whatever the Send system's problems, the answer is not to remove the rights of children and young people. Families cannot afford to lose these precious legal protections.
We know that Reform and the Tories already deny that there are as many children with autism and ADHD as clearly have these conditions, and that those children need the support that they clearly require, and we know that Labour is indifferent to the needs of those with almost any form of disability, could it be that Labour is now going to make children with special needs pay to balance their books? The possibility is real, and horrendous.
I have already written about education and the economic benefits this morning. It would not just be economic madness to abandon children with Send, because the long-term costs of doing so will be horrendous; it would also represent massively inappropriate neoliberal economic madness. But has that ever stopped Starmer and Reeves?
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They’ve already imposed 40% cut in the Adoption Support Fund which provides funding for therapeutic services for adopted children. They’ve also removed entirely assessment funding. £3000 will pay for just enough so that our child will get to know the therapist. Won’t even begin to scratch the surface of need. I can’t believe that Labour has been where not even the Tories would go, and target some of the most vulnerable children. Our family is hanging by a thread.
I am so sorry, Barry.
I sent 14 years as a school governor, mainly as Chair.
I know how critical these services are. It is vital that they survive.
I have two children with SEND
Given whats happening with Disability, Poverty and Gaza I can see people voting Pitchfork as forseen by Nick Hanauer
Petition is here
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/711021
Signed. Thank you.
I would encourage others to do the same.
Done.
Signed – its at about 110k now.
Short sighted (the costs of NOT helping these children are enormous, socially, emotionally and economically).
Cruel, callous, stupid and shortsighted.
Do you HAVE to be a sociopath to join the Cabinet?I’m sure it helps.
done
Thanks for raising this. I too strongly support this letter.
I know that there are actually far to few EHCPs. They are difficult to obtain, even when the need is obvious, in state schools. And they take years to obtain. Consequently there are many children who need EHCPs who don’t have them. They disrupt the class, they can’t help it, and disadvantage the other children through reducing the productivity of the teachers.
Far from there being too many EHCPs there are too few. There are many with undiagnosed ASD and ADHD.
Many may not realise the situation has got much worse in recent years. The specialist SEN units are full of very severely disabled children. There used not to be so many, but improvements in saving very premature babies has resulted in many more severely disabled children. Consequently those children who would previously have been in specialist schools are now in normal schools where they cause huge disruption.
The schools do not have a choice about taking them. So each class has a few. Many do not have the support they need, disrupting the other children. It takes a very skilled and dedicated teacher to manage such a class, if that’s even possible. We have a few, but not nearly enough, and of course the government resists paying what is needed to recruit and retain skilled experienced teachers.
In short, the situation is much worse than many people imagine.
It is not hard to see why government is trying to cut the cost of EHCPs. They are a big expense for local authorities, many of which are close to bankruptcy. Unless the government curtails EHCP expenditure then they will have to bail out local authorities. And, they claim, they don’t have the money to do so.
But, again, it’s a dreadful false economy.
Will the government never learn? It’s like winter fuel allowances, and reductions in disabled benefits, PIP, all over again. It is, as with those cases, morally disgraceful to target some of the weakest members of our society and children in general.
Of course the government can find the money for EHCPs, and the extra that is badly needed to help all our children, when there is about £45 billion of uncollected taxes (HMRC’s own underestimate), and £70 billion in pension tax relief given predominantly to the wealthy. Even a modest improvement in collecting taxes or reducing benefits for the wealthy, would pay what is required many times over.
Why is it that, when there is a need for money, the government targets the weakest, poorest and most vulnerable in our society. What’s wrong with them? Where is their morality?
I wish I could answer your questions
sadly its because they are the most vulnerable and weakest in society they are targetted, the thinking is they wont fight back..
Good article from John Harris
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/07/disability-cuts-educational-rights-special-needs-children-parents
NB I know him to say ‘hello’ to and his kids went to the same schools as mine
Well perhaps you could give him a pat on the back for spending 3 years trashing Corbyn, and then ask him what he is whining for, given his “grown ups” are now in charge.
Might the current fashion of major political parties, and their investors, to limit thinking, policy and actions to the manipulative model of domestic “book balancing”, have achieved a new low of analysis failure, gratuitous cruelty and conspicuous oppression?
Even according to ostentatious false-book keeping oppression of the many, this does not make sense.
More than half of U. K. prisoners are functionally illiterate. Reduce the illiteracy to reduce the prison population and you reduce the cost of incarceration.
Having had the joy of teaching in two primary schools where no child left unable to read with enjoyment and confidence, my experience is that illiteracy is facilitated by socio-economic contexts and an imposed and zealously guarded, authoritarian and oppressive educational set up.
It bends the child and the teacher to the dictated model instead of creating and adapting what is taught to suit and benefit the child.
[Much like recent and current politics?]
“It’s so typical of the poligentsia to “explain” everything and to show understanding of nothing.”
[From Joost Meerloo]
s://northwestbylines.co.uk/news/education/over-half-of-uk-prisoners-cannot-read/#:~:text=Over%2050%25%20of%20adults%20in,impact%20on%20rehabilitation%20and%20recidivism.&text=Data%20published%20by%20the%20Ministry,an%20average%2011%20year%20old.
Thank you
Not for the first time, my mind is boggled by the callousness of this Labour in name only Government.
I spend some time working in prisons, and can tell you that a large number of people in prison are neuro diverse, have special educational needs, and have been failed spectacularly by the education system already. There are many that won’t engage with prison education because of the bad experiences they have had in school.
Are we going to be a country that just imprisons people who don’t fit into the government’s neat little idea of what the ‘ideal person’ should be?
Thank you
Dusting off my PhD in the Bleeding Obvious
1. We have a labour shortage, and
2. A prison overcrowding crisis
So surely what we need to ensure is that as far as possible and I dont mean this in a utilitarian sort of way every young person leaving school is able to become a useful member of society.
While EHCP’s are far from the only issue its obvious that for several decades Governments have taken there eye of one of the most important Educational balls in a most negligent and ignorant way.
Mine is in Arse – Elbow Differentiation 🙂
It takes a tribe to raise a child. Two parents, living together or separated, or one parent alone, can struggle to raise children. Isolated as they are by their work commitments, finances, and the fractured social bonds imposed by a society that tries to financialize us and quantify us into easily consumed economic parcels, the government needs to recognize that if it wants this system to work, it has to play its part. The government needs to acknowledge that it is our tribe. If it wants us to work and pay taxes, to keep the economy moving, it needs to grease the wheels. Excluding so many from public life is insanity, and shows that they aren’t part of our society.
Much to agree with
And presumably, if this inhumane proposal goes ahead for England and Wales, the funding for Scotland will be cut, making it difficult for the Scottish Government to continue to support Co-ordinated Support Plans (the EHCP equivalent in Scotland).
Correct
For over two years I have been supporting a single parent with two adopted children to first get EHCPs and then to actually get what the children need.
The barriers are mind blowing.
And still neither is getting what is needed.
LA says it has not got the money
Thank you
And good luck