Education, health and care plans (EHCPs) should be issued only to children and young people who need all three services, while those with life-long or life-limiting conditions should receive statutory help until the age of 25, according to a new report from the Children’s Commissioner.
Dame Rachel de Souza said statutory support should be “more specifically designed around children’s needs” if they fall behind developmentally or academically.
This means that some children will require just an education plan, while others might require an education and care plan, particularly if they have a social worders or are at risk of extra-familial harm.
Some young people, meanwhile, will need an education and health plan, particularly if they have chronic health conditions of mental health problems, according to her report.
However, no child with an existing EHCP should lose their plan given “just how long and how hard those with existing plans have fought to obtain them”.
For some children even the best teaching will not be enough unless the systems around them can respond to the daily complexities of their lives
The recommendations, set out in a report detailing the outcome of a survey by de Souza’s office of most schools in England, come as the government was finalising its plans to reform the system of support for special educational needs and disabilities.
The survey found the experiences and progress of children with SEND was a top concern for 53 per cent of primary schools and 40 per cent of secondary schools.
For implementing EHCPs, the “main barrier in both primary (69 per cent) and secondary schools (72 per cent) was funding not matching need, with a lack of specialist staffing cited as the second biggest barrier”.
Tacking a low-trust environment
In carrying out reform, the government should “recognise, however, just how long and how hard those with existing plans have fought to obtain them.
“In such a low-trust environment, any reform will be met with significant and understandable resistance, and it will be difficult to deliver with consent,” the report said.
“As such, the vision for this system set out is a longer-term one. No child with an existing plan should lose their plan. No child should have to move school. We need more support, not less, more easily, more locally.”
Other recommendations include:
- A “clear statement of ambition for all children”, with concrete goals to reduce absence and meet every child’s needs, “backed by clear accountability with school and local level data for attendance, engagement, attainment, and progress being published”.
- A “broader conception of need based on a new definition of ‘additional needs’”. This “should include a broader range of needs, including safety, pastoral, health and learning needs”. A new additional needs framework should detail “different levels and types of need and what is expected of schools, and wider services”.
- A new funding premium for additional needs and inclusion, giving schools with high levels additional funding. Create a “core offer from all schools”, with funding to access high quality pastoral support and key professionals and services.
- Offer children who aren’t “school-ready” by the end of reception a children’s plan and an additional year in reception.
- An “overarching framework” for alternative provision which outlines how every child will receive support. “No child should be excluded to home. There should be a day one right to alternative provision”.
Launching the report, de Souza said: “My school census confirms what children have already told me: that they deeply value education, but where they need extra help, it should be easily accessible and available locally. Now school leaders have agreed, with powerful results, as they lay bare the challenge of filling the gaps left by years of neglecting other services, without the structures and systems to support them.
“School leaders acknowledge that they have benefitted from the energy, investment and focus of the last 30 years of education reform. For most children, this transformed their outcomes and opportunities. For many of the most vulnerable, it failed.
“The next great wave of education reform must fill those gaps by redefining how we think about need in school, because for some children even the best teaching will not be enough unless the systems around them can respond to the daily complexities of their lives. Too often, these additional needs – those which require extra help to attend and engage at school – are ignored, unrecognised or shoehorned into a SEND system that cannot provide the right support.”
