Labour to create up to 60,000 spaces for children with Send in English schools | Special educational needs
The government will invest £3 billion in creating special places in local state schools for students with special educational needs and disabilities (Send), a key part of efforts to tackle the growing number of children facing social and mental health problems in England.
The plan, announced by education secretary Bridget Phillipson to create up to 60,000 places in mainstream schools, will be partly funded by the suspension of a planned group of free schools, delivering an estimated savings of £600 million over the coming years. The remaining £2.4bn will come from ministerial spending set out in the November budget.
Phillipson said: “This government will fix the broken education system for Send children and young people by ensuring their local schools are the right ones too.
“Ahead of our reforms next year, we are laying the foundations for a new system that will bring Send children from forgotten to included and gain the trust of parents.
“This £3bn investment will change lives. It will open the door to opportunity for tens of thousands of children from Send, giving them the chance to learn, belong and thrive in their local community.”
Urgent need for change emphasized figures It shows that the lawsuits filed by parents regarding the meeting of their children’s special needs continue to increase. The number of Removal objections heard by the courts rose for the ninth year in a row to 25,002 in 2024-25, an 18% increase on the previous year, the Ministry of Justice said.
The Department for Education (DfE) is working on reforms to be included in a schools whitepaper planned for early next year, with schools minister Georgia Gould, consultants and DfE officials holding regional and online forums to gauge responses from parents, charities and school leaders.
One of the DfE’s key principles is that children with special needs should be able to attend local schools with their peers, rather than having to travel long distances to find suitable education.
The DfE said its announcement would “underpin significant future reform of the delivery support system, helping schools to be inclusive by design” and include a white paper detailing how schools will be funded to support specialist places.
Gould said the whitepaper would look at “every aspect of the school system”, including issues such as behavior and the high rate of students with special needs who are suspended or expelled, while maintaining the important role of special schools for children with complex needs.
Around 460,000 children and young people in England have their special needs met through education, health and care plans (EHCPs), a legal document agreed between local authorities and families. But many people find the EHCP process complicated and bureaucratic, and an increasing number of people are being forced to appeal through specialist Referral tribunals to change or enforce their agreements with councils.
Ministry of Justice figures show the number of registered appeals heard by the courts jumped from just over 3,100 a decade ago to 25,002 in the last school year. The backlog continued to grow, with 15,000 open cases recorded in September.
99 percent of the cases decided by the court were concluded in favor of the families who appealed.
Madeleine Cassidy, chief executive of the Independent Provider of Special Education Advice, a charity focusing on England’s special needs laws, said: “[The figures] Reveal the extent of illegal decision-making in local authorities. Children and young people from Send are still regularly deprived of the educational services to which they are legally entitled. “This is a systemic failure and is an issue that needs to be addressed in next year’s whitepaper.”
Some of the new funding comes at the expense of under-construction free schools, including the Middlesbrough sixth form, which will be opened in a collaboration between Eton college and the Star academy chain. But two other sixth forms planned by the group in Dudley and Oldham will also go ahead.
The 60,000 special needs places include 10,000 places in special schools under free schools schemes which have been suspended by the DfE. The ministry said only 15 special and alternative provision (AP) free schools will continue as planned but local authorities will be given the option to complete the remaining 77 projects or receive equivalent funding to provide Referral places.
Directed by Meg Powell-Chandler New Schools NetworkHe said: “We regret the decision to cancel a number of projects and are concerned that there remains uncertainty over the 77 vital private and AP free school proposals that will deliver much-needed, high-quality specialist places.”
