John Milne

SEND provision in our schools is in a state of deep and growing crisis. In my area, West Sussex county council is already struggling with a £130 million SEND deficit this year—a figure likely to rise to £224 million by next year. That huge figure is one of the worst in the country, but what is truly concerning is that so much overspend has not even bought us a satisfactory service. Complaints from parents and schools have filled my postbag ever since the election. Only half of EHCPs nationally are issued within the legal 20-week timeframe. In West Sussex it is even worse: just 12% now meet the deadline—and that is after a big push to get the waiting list down. It is hard to believe that slow processing is not a tactic. An EHCP gives parents the right to access educational support, but that support does not actually exist, so the local authority’s solution is to create deliberate bottlenecks in the system so that many families will never get all the way through. That is particularly unfair at the nursery level, because educational psychologist assessments can take so long that the child is all the way through school before they get one. More and more families are forced to go to appeal—tribunal appeals are up 53% in one year—but the fact that councils lose almost all those cases tells us that things should never have got that far in the first place. In effect, that discriminates heavily against parents who, for whatever reason, are less able to fight their case all the way through the system. I have met many parents with SEN children and the emotional cost is enormous. Sometimes I feel like I myself need counselling afterwards. Parents have to watch their children drift away from mainstream schooling when early intervention might have saved them. Families are breaking up under the strain. One couple told me that a third of marriages do not survive the experience. Of course, the pressure on staff is no less severe. Our teachers—particularly SENCOs—are exhausted, unsupported and leaving the profession. One Horsham SENCO told me: “We are seasoned professionals, but we are at breaking point.” Mainstream schools face manifest injustices. One school told me about a child who was refused by a specialist school because their needs were said to be too great. What happened? The child was allocated to an ordinary mainstream primary without any specialist support. I realise that the demands on the Government’s budget are endless, but I hope that the current review will lead to swift action. Any further delay means we risk losing all the educational progress that teachers have worked so hard to deliver over the past 10 years.