The schools standards minister, Catherine McKinnel, has refused to rule out the replacement of education, health and care plans (EHCP) as part of an overhaul of the education of children with special needs (Send).
This move could force thousands of pupils out of mainstream education, according to The Guardian, and hundreds of thousands of children with special needs could lose their legal entitlement to extra support in schools.
10 years of EHCPs
Families have relied on EHCPs for more than a decade. The plans guarantee their right to support for conditions such as mental health issues and autism spectrum disorders.
EHCPs outline the exact support a child with Send should receive at school, which can include one-to-one assistance, speech and language therapy, specialist equipment and tailored teaching strategies.
Without EHCP, schools are no longer under a legal duty to meet a child’s specific needs.
In 2024 the National Audit Office said the EHCP system was financially unsustainable with a 140% rise in the last decade and with many councils running up deficits.
But the proposed move away from it has provoked a fierce backlash from parents, charities and lawyers.
Viewpoint: Special needs schooling
Back before the 1980s children with special needs received alternative and separated education provision. Towards the end of the 1980s special units were set up in schools to provide support to meet specialist needs.
Today the cost of providing education for the hundreds of thousands of children with special needs has sky-rocketed with parents adamant that it is their children’s legal right to receive this special provision.
Unless we begin to see children with special needs as a valuable source of untapped talent rather than just an additional cost, all we will have is a system which yo-yos every few decades and is dependent on the politics of the day.
