| SPOTLIGHT |
A group of 34 lawyers who represent families have called on the Government to abandon proposals for reforming the system in England for supporting children and young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND).
In a letter to the Secretary of State for Education, the lawyers shared their concerns over the proposals in the Government’s SEND Review green paper, which they argued “risk diluting children and young people’s rights to provision and support that meets their individual needs.”
They said that in particular, they were concerned that a proposal to introduce statutory national standards “will have the effect of levelling down not up, meaning that some children and young people with SEND would receive less provision than they need”.
The signatories are drawn from charity IPSEA, law firms including Rook Irwin Sweeney, Irwin Mitchell and Simpson Millar, and barristers’ chambers including Matrix Chambers and 3PB Barristers.
The lawyers urged policy-makers to look at what they said was a wealth of evidence on how and why the 2014 SEND reforms hadn’t worked as intended, rather than implementing a new set of reforms.
The letter states:
“The SEND reforms introduced by the Children and Families Act 2014 were – and remain – the right reforms, underpinned by important principles that continue to hold true. There have been extensive analyses by the National Audit Office, Education Select Committee and others of how these reforms have been implemented. There is consensus that implementation has been inadequate, with local authorities routinely failing to fulfil the legal duties to children and young people with SEND set out in the legislation and associated regulations.
“The SEND system is broken because it lacks local accountability. It is riddled with unlawful decision-making, with no negative consequences for local decision-makers – only for children and young people with SEND.
“[…] In our view, the key to resolving the SEND crisis lies in finding a way to ensure that local authorities comply with the existing law and fulfil their duties to children and young people, not in implementing a new set of reforms.”
The signatories called on the Government to introduce a robust set of consequences for local authorities that break the law.
Polly Sweeney, Partner at Rook Irwin Sweeney, said: “The Government’s proposal to introduce mandatory mediation is of real concern. It restricts access to justice for parents and young people and creates further unnecessary delays in being able to access suitable special educational provision and placements. It will introduce unnecessary additional costs for local authorities who have to fund the costs of each mediation, and will limit the ability of the parties to resolve the dispute in a timely manner.”
Ali Fiddy, Chief Executive at IPSEA, said: “The focus of the SEND Review is on changing things without understanding or questioning why the current system isn’t working. It's vital not to underestimate the significance of the Government’s proposals and the extent to which they will entail a complete overhaul of the current SEND legal framework.
“The proposals would, if implemented, make it harder to access special educational provision and support that meets children and young people’s needs, and harder to seek redress when these needs are not met.
“Rather than legislation for a new set of national standards and all the upheaval that system reform would entail, children and young people with SEND need – more than anything – robust accountability measures to ensure that the existing legal framework is upheld for every child in every local authority area.”
The full list of signatories can be seen here, published by IPSEA.
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We believe every child, including those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), should have access to a high-quality education.
“That is why we have proposed new national standards and simplified Education, Health and Care plans, among many other ambitious measures in the SEND and Alternative Provision Green Paper to improve the experience and outcomes for these children. We continue to work with stakeholders from across the sector to bring about widespread reform.”
The Department said it is currently reviewing and using the feedback from the Green Paper consultation which closed on 22 July, along with continued engagement with the system, to inform the next stage of delivering improvements for children, young people and their families.
In July this year the Local Government Association said in its response to the Green Paper that attempts in the Children and Families Act 2014 to improve provision for children with SEND had failed through lack of sufficient powers and funds for councils.
The LGA argued that any revised system would succeed only if these defects were put right.
The Government launched a consultation in March on a single national system for children and young people with SEND and alternative provision (AP) for them including new obligations on local authorities.
It said this would introduce new standards in the quality of support given and improve a system that had become “inconsistent, process-heavy and increasingly adversarial”.
