As the SEND reform consultation period comes to an end today (May 18), one thing has become increasingly clear from conversations happening across the sector: there is widespread support for reform, but growing anxiety about the direction it may ultimately take.
Parents are worried. Specialist schools are worried. And many frontline professionals feel the debate is drifting dangerously away from the reality vulnerable children are facing every day.
Nobody seriously argues the current SEND system is working well enough. Families are exhausted by conflict and delay. Local authorities are under huge financial pressure. Schools are struggling to cope with rising complexity of need. Reform is necessary.
In many respects, the government’s ambition is the right one. Earlier intervention, stronger collaboration and more inclusive education should absolutely be the goal. A system that responds earlier and more effectively to children’s needs will always be better for families and ultimately more sustainable financially too.
But what many people across the sector are now quietly asking is this: are we in danger of pursuing reform in a way that unintentionally weakens the very support structures some children rely on most?
Reform through a financial lens
That concern is particularly acute when it comes to specialist schools. Increasingly, specialist provision is being discussed primarily through the lens of cost.
There is a growing narrative that independent specialist schools are part of the problem. And while scrutiny is entirely right, that framing risks missing a much more important truth.
Specialist schools did not emerge because the system had excess capacity. They evolved because the wider system could not meet the needs of some of the country’s most vulnerable children.
One of the strongest messages I hear from families is not opposition to reform, but fear of losing trust and choice
At TCES, and across much of the specialist sector, we work with children whose educational pathways have already broken down elsewhere.
Many arrive after repeated failed placements, severe school anxiety, exclusion or prolonged absence from education.
These are often children carrying layered neurodivergence, trauma and profound social and emotional distress.
The reality is that specialist schools adapted because they had to. Over time, our schools increasingly embedded therapeutic support into every aspect of education, not as an optional add-on, but because children’s needs demanded it. Integrated clinical teams, trauma-informed practice and relational approaches became essential to stabilising children before meaningful learning could even begin.
This is why many in the sector are deeply uneasy about suggestions that SEND funding could become more standardised or “price-led”.
Reducing conflict, or accountability?
Children with SEND do not fit neatly into predefined packages. Their needs are not uniform, and neither are the settings required to support them safely and successfully.
If reform focuses too heavily on reducing specialist provision or constraining parental access to it before alternative capacity exists, the unintended consequences could be significant.
We risk seeing more exclusions. More absenteeism. More children falling out of education entirely. And ultimately, far greater long-term costs to the wider system.
One of the strongest messages I continue to hear from families is not opposition to reform itself, but fear of losing trust and choice within the system.
Many parents already feel they have to fight relentlessly simply to secure appropriate support for their children. They worry that reforms designed to reduce conflict could end up reducing accountability instead.
Government should listen carefully to those concerns. Because specialist schools are not separate from inclusion. They are part of how inclusion succeeds.
The sector holds deep expertise in supporting children whose needs are most complex and whose experiences of education have often already become fractured. That expertise should not be marginalised or treated with suspicion. It should be actively deployed across the wider system.
There is enormous potential for specialist providers to work more closely alongside mainstream schools through structured outreach, immersive support and partnership models that build confidence and capability earlier.
If we genuinely want more children to remain successfully included within mainstream education, then mainstream schools need access to specialist expertise before situations escalate into crisis.
Expertise is vital
That is where the conversation now needs to move. Not whether specialist schools should exist, but how the expertise within them can strengthen the entire SEND system.
There is still time for government to get this right. But that depends on listening more closely to families, recognising the rising complexity of need honestly and resisting the temptation to frame specialist provision purely as a financial problem to be controlled.
SEND reform will only succeed if it reflects the reality children and families are living every day.
At its heart, this is not a debate about structures or ideology. It is about ensuring vulnerable children receive the right support, at the right time, in the right setting before more children are lost from a system that doesn’t understand them or know how to support them.
