According to the government, children with special educational needs should be supported earlier in school as part of a new national system.
The UK Department of Education’s plans include digitizing paperwork so parents can get extra support for their children faster.
It is the result of a delayed review of Support for Children with Special Educational Needs or Disabilities (SEND).
Critics say too little urgency has been shown to address the “broken system”.
Last year, 1.4 million pupils were identified in England as having special educational needs – and the proportion has been growing since 2017.
Education Minister Nadhim Zahawi told BBC News that early intervention was a “focus” of the plans – and would be achieved in part by training 5,000 more educators to become SEN coordinators (Sencos), who will monitor and assess the progress of SEN children .
The plans “will give families across the country confidence that their local school will be equipped to provide tailored and quality support very early on in their child’s journey through education, whatever their needs,” he said he .
£70m of new funding would be used to support the proposals, the Department for Education has said.
But for some families, the review announced in 2019 comes too late.
Natasha Balashova, from Norwich, says securing extra support for her son has been “an impossible struggle that crushes your soul and drains all your energy”.
Boris, seven, is autistic and hasn’t been to his regular school for a year because he didn’t get enough support, she says.
Children who need more help than is available through SEN support – such as B. one-to-one tuition or a place in a technical school – must have an education, health and care plan (EHCP).
“Because the system is broken, there are delays at every step of the process,” Ms Balashova told BBC News.
While his EHCP was being processed, Boris did not receive the support he needed.
And by the time it was ready to be implemented, he had become too scared to go to school.
Ms Balashova is “skeptical” that the government’s proposals will improve the EHCP process because “there is no quick fix to this shambles – it needs to be reorganized from the top down”.
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Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders union, welcomed the government’s focus on early intervention but said it was frustrating that the review had been delayed “and full implementation of the Green Paper is still a long way off”.
“Meanwhile, many thousands of children and young people will continue to go through a broken system, with schools lacking sufficient resources to pick up the pieces,” he added.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT school leaders union, said the green paper had some “sound” ideas but he was “not convinced” the plans were ambitious enough to tackle waiting lists for specialist services like speech therapy.
Labour’s shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson said the plans were “incredibly disappointing” and failed to provide the “transformation” needed to improve SEND support.
“Warm words about early intervention are not enough when affordable childcare is not available for most parents,” she added.
However, some children are already benefiting from early intervention projects.
Lilycroft Primary School in Bradford was part of a study in which experts are using data to identify children who may need more support, and at a much earlier stage than usual.
Headmistress Nicola Roth told BBC News it could take six years for a child in Bradford to be diagnosed as autistic – which can delay the support they are entitled to.
“We can just continue treating the child and get the best education for the child as soon as possible,” she said, adding that she hopes every school could benefit from the same model.
Prof Mark Mon-Williams, a director of the Center for Applied Educational Research at Bradford Royal Infirmary, who led the process, said: ‘All the evidence is that early action is good across the board.
“That child can then thrive in the educational environment, which means we then have fewer issues to deal with in terms of that child’s long-term physical and mental health.”
Other suggestions in the SEND and Alternative Rules Green Paper are:
- Publish local dashboards to make it clearer to parents who is responsible for which part of the system
- Establish a national framework for councils to make clear what level of support is expected for children with the greatest additional needs
- Spending £10m to train more than 200 more educational psychologists who will graduate in 2026 and provide advice and input on EHCP assessments and offer wider support.
- Approval of up to 40 new special and alternative schools
Families will be invited to share their views on the design of the new system in a 13-week public consultation.
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