The government’s proposed reforms to SEND support in schools are, broadly, the right call. After years of a system that has failed children, overstretched local authorities, and left parents fighting for support that should have been automatic, a serious attempt at structural change is overdue.
We welcome the direction of travel. But welcoming the destination is not the same as being confident the vehicle is roadworthy – and right now, the funding picture leaves too many questions unanswered.
Why reform is urgent
The scale of the challenge is significant. Nearly one in five pupils in England – 1.7 million children – now receive some form of SEND support, an increase of almost 100,000 since 2024 alone. The number of Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) has risen by 165% since 2014, with demand for specialist provision growing at a similar rate. Despite record investment over the past decade, the Public Accounts Committee concluded in January 2025 that the system is “inconsistent, inequitable and not delivering in line with expectations” – and, critically, that it is “unaffordable.”
The rise is driven primarily by autism, social, emotional and mental health needs, and speech, language and communication needs. These are not niche categories. They describe a substantial and growing proportion of young people who need consistent, skilled, and personalised support to thrive in education – and who are currently too often let down by the current systems.
What the reforms propose
The Schools White Paper sets out a significant shift in how SEND support is structured. The key proposals include:
- A new tiered model: universal, targeted, targeted plus, and specialist support.
- Greater inclusion in mainstream settings, with 10,000 new specialist places already created.
- Digital Individual Support Plans for every child or young person with identified SEND.
- National training for all early years, school, and college staff.
- Schools required to publish an Inclusion Strategy showing how resources are used.
- £7 billion more for SEND support compared to 2025–26, with £1 billion extra in 2026–27 rising to £1.5 billion per year by 2028–29.
These are meaningful commitments. The emphasis on early identification, staff training, and mainstream inclusion reflects what practitioners have long argued: that better upfront support reduces the pressure on specialist provision downstream. The national training offer in particular is something we have long advocated for.
The funding question
Here is where our cautious optimism runs into a wall. At the time of the Autumn Budget 2025, the Office for Budget Responsibility projected that SEND spending would exceed available funding by around £6 billion. The government’s response has been to increase DfE budgets and to state that future costs “will be managed, in full, within the overall government budget” from 2028 onwards. That is reassuring in tone, but thin on detail.
“The current system is in desperate need of reform. Despite all this extra spending, the quality of support is patchy and slow to arrive, and the system is characterised by bureaucracy and conflict.” – Institute for Fiscal Studies, February 2026
Local authorities are already carrying significant high-needs deficits – the high needs National Funding Formula has been frozen for 2026/27, with allocations based on the previous year’s formula. The government has committed to covering 90% of those deficits up to the end of 2025/26, which is welcome, but leaves open what happens next. Many councils are already setting deficit budgets. The gap between ambition and delivery is not hypothetical – it is a present reality in most local areas.
For the reforms to deliver, we need transparency: not just headline investment figures, but a clear account of how funding reaches schools, what proportion is ring-fenced for SEND, and how the transition costs of shifting towards mainstream inclusion will be met. Without that clarity, there is a real risk that good intentions do not translate into changed experiences for children and families.
Where Response fits in
At Response, we work with young people with SEND every day – and we know that the most important factor in a young person’s progress is rarely the structure of a plan. It is the quality of the relationship they have with a skilled, informed, and genuinely curious practitioner.
All of our workers are trained to Level 2 in SEND, giving them a grounded understanding of the needs they are supporting. But we go beyond that. Our approach is rooted in person-centred and strengths-based practice – we start from what a young person can do, what they care about, and what they need to flourish, not from a deficit model that leads with what they cannot do.
Neurodiversity is central to how we think and work. We draw on both lived experience and professional understanding, recognising that the young people we support are often the experts on their own minds – and that effective support means listening before prescribing. For many of the young people we work with, particularly those with autism, ADHD, or social and emotional mental health needs, what makes the difference is not a label or a plan, but a trusted adult who sees them clearly and meets them where they are.
The government’s reforms, if properly resourced, create space for organisations like Response to play a more integral role in the SEND support system – sitting alongside schools, providing targeted and flexible support that complements what teachers and SENCOs do, and reaching young people who are at risk of disengaging entirely. That is a role we are ready to play.
What we need to see
We want these reforms to succeed. That means clear funding pathways for every tier of support, honest engagement with the workforce gap (there are not enough trained teaching assistants, educational psychologists, or SEND-specialist youth workers to deliver this at scale), and a genuine commitment to co-production with families and young people – not just consultation.
The direction is right. The children waiting for support cannot afford for the detail to be wrong.
Sources: DfE Schools White Paper 2026; House of Commons Library SEND Briefing (CBP-10550); Institute for Fiscal Studies, February 2026; Public Accounts Committee report, January 2025; Local Government Association SEND response, January 2026; Parliament Education Select Committee Government Response, November 2025; NASUWT School Funding briefing, 2026.