Keir Starmer looks at sweeping reforms to special education needs

Stay informed with free updates

Simply sign up Social affairs myFT Digest – delivered straight to your inbox.

Thousands fewer students could be entitled to the full package of special education support in England under sweeping changes being considered by Sir Keir Starmer, as Labor seeks to improve a “negligent” system.

Senior government officials said ministers were looking to introduce legislation to change the system under which children with special educational needs receive the support schemes required to access the full range of state aid.

Education, Health and Support Plans (EHCPs) were introduced in 2014 as part of the Children and Families Act, which sets out the support that local authorities have a legal obligation to provide to children with the highest needs.

EHCPs provide additional assistance to those who qualify, including individual support, transportation services, and, in some cases, access to expensive special education.

The proposals under consideration include changes to the system that underpins the provision of support, which is likely to affect children at the “milder” end of the spectrum of conditions such as ADHD and autism spectrum disorder, according to a senior official.

“This will mean thousands fewer students receiving benefits,” one official said.

The move would be just one prong of a wider range of reforms Starmer is introducing to the SEN system.

The government is seeking to significantly increase the provision of special education support within mainstream schools, including announcing £740 million this month for local authorities to create new special needs places.

It also pledged to improve early intervention services provided to schools to prevent students’ conditions from deteriorating over time.

Starmer said this week that his “legacy in the SEN was a system neglected to the point of complete crisis”.

“We have to reform, put in place an early intervention system, and make sure that is mostly the trend,” he told parliament’s liaison committee on Thursday.

“If we don’t change the way special education is provided, we will never be able to close the gap and solve the problem,” he added.

Experts say the SEN system is broken with growing demand for EHCPs putting huge pressure on councils’ stretched budgets.

Meanwhile, they say, very limited support is being offered to people with special educational needs who don’t get a statement, prompting families and schools to seek out EHCPs for some less serious conditions.

Local authorities have accumulated a deficit in their high-needs budgets of around £3.3 billion this year, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which warned that this deficit could rise to more than £8 billion in the next three years.

Outcomes First Group, England’s largest provider of specialist education for children with special needs, released a report this week calling on the government to redesign the EHCP process using a tiered assessment model.

The proposed model would limit data to “cases of the most serious special educational needs requiring comprehensive and specialist intervention”, while offering simpler, more targeted interventions for people with less complex needs.

Given the growing number of students taking EHCPs, “it is not surprising that the government is starting to think about phasing”, said Luke Sibieta, a research fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a think-tank.

“The missing piece of the current system” is state support for those whose needs do not qualify for full EHCP entitlement, Cibetta added.

The number of children and young people needing support for special education needs in England has more than doubled over the past decade, from 240,000 in January 2015 to 576,000 in January 2024, according to the National Audit Office.

Nearly five percent of all students now have a special needs plan, up from a flat rate of 2.9 percent between 2000 and 2018, according to the IFS.

The rise in demand has outstripped funding, despite the government’s real budget for high needs increasing by more than 50 per cent over the past decade – from £6.8 billion in 2015 to more than £10 billion in 2024.

The government said there were “too many children whose needs are not being met, and parents are forced to struggle to access support”, adding that it was determined to “restore the confidence of families” across the country.