On 18 September 2025, the Education Select Committee published their Report, ‘Solving the SEND crisis’. They note the ‘report calls for culture shift and funding to make mainstream education genuinely inclusive’.
Giving further detail the Select Committee Press Release wrote:
“A new Education Committee report calls for a root and branch transformation of the way mainstream education caters to children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).
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SEND must become an intrinsic part of the mainstream education system, rather than an addition to it, the Committee’s report says, after its inquiry witnessed examples of good practice in English schools and abroad.
Embedding inclusivity in all education settings, from early years through to post-16, and identifying needs early in a child’s education, will enable support to be provided in the mainstream. The Government must therefore invest in the skills of all current and future school staff, making SEND the responsibility of the whole school.
This cultural shift would then calm the rising need for complex, costly education health and care (EHC) plans in the long-term, and help put schools and local authorities’ finances on a sustainable footing.
The cross-party Committee calls on the Government to invest in both the education and health services’ workforces, to ensure that the health service steps up to its role in solving the SEND crisis, and to improve collaboration between the two sectors.
MPs recommend a review of the national funding formula for schools to take better account of factors that vary between local areas such as prevalence of need, deprivation and distances travelled by home-to-school transport. They also highlight the need to expand the number of specialist school places in the state sector so that more children can be educated closer to home and spending on expensive independent school places can be reduced.
As well as setting out a vision for an inclusive education system and citing examples of replicable good practice, the report’s introduction highlights the growing scale of need.
Since the introduction of the Children and Families Act 2014, the number of children and young people identified with SEND has risen from 1.3 million to 1.7 million. In 2024/25, over 1.2 million children and young people were receiving SEN support, and nearly half a million had an EHC plan.
The County Councils Network of the Local Government Association told the Committee that “increased complexity”, with children being diagnosed with multiple, complex needs, has become the “new normal”.
Rising levels of need and pressure on the system have also led to assessments being carried out later, often after a child’s needs have escalated.
Autism is the most common type of need cited in EHC plans (33.6%), but the Committee heard that since the Covid pandemic there has also been a particular increase in speech, language and communication needs, and social, emotional and mental health needs.
The report does not draw a conclusion on the causes of increasing numbers of children presenting with SEN needs, but cites a number of examples given by expert witnesses …”.
Education Committee Chair Helen Hayes MP said:
“When the Education Committee launched its inquiry, we already knew that the SEND system was broken, long past needing repair, and chronically letting down children, their families and their teachers. Our report presents a vision for how the Government can realise its laudable aim of making mainstream education inclusive to the vast majority of children and young people with SEND, who are present in every classroom.
This isn’t just blue sky thinking. A model the Government can learn from already exists in the Canadian state of Ontario, where we saw teachers actively try to meet the needs of their pupils from their first day at school. Closer to home, we witnessed an inspiring whole-school approach to SEND at two settings in Norfolk.
We also call for an increase in the number of specialist state school places so that more children can be educated close to home, reducing the cost of transport and expensive independent school places.
Making sure every child in the country with SEND can attend a local school that meets their needs will require a root and branch transformation. SEND must become the business of every front line professional in educational settings, with in-depth training at the start and throughout the careers of teachers, senior leaders and teaching assistants.
The Government must develop a standardised, national framework for the support that children with SEND can expect in school, long before requiring an EHC plan, so that there can be confidence and clear lines of accountability. In the long term, a genuinely inclusive, well-resourced mainstream education system will bring down the desperate struggle to obtain an EHC plan. This will also help stabilise the sector financially.
We heard frustration from the local government and education sectors that the health service doesn’t prioritise SEND, and can be a blocker to families getting the support they need. The Government must put SEND firmly on the agenda of local NHS commissioners and appoint senior responsible officers for SEND at a local level.
Some of this Committee’s key recommendations will require investment to embed new practices and bring in new resources. But any piecemeal alternative would mean that we later look back at this period as the moment the Government failed to finally solve the SEND crisis.”
The Report made a series of recommendations, including:
- “DfE should publish within three months its definition of ‘inclusive’ education, along with a clear rationale and examples of good practice. This definition should be underpinned by key elements:
- Accessibility of educational environments to meet pupils’ sensory and physical needs.
- Expertise of staff to support pupils.
- A flexible curriculum which accommodates the needs of pupils with SEND.
- Accountability systems that examine and prioritise the progress and outcomes of all pupils so that inclusion is embedded as an essential component of quality for all settings.
- Good inclusive practice must always ensure rigorous, systemic approaches to understanding the individual needs of every child and delivering personalised support.
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- DfE should publish a unified national framework for ordinarily available provision and SEN support. This should offer clear, evidence-led guidance and include practical, real-world examples tailored to educators and educational settings, ensuring that all practitioners have access to quality-assured strategies and interventions.
- The Department should publish statutory requirements detailing the minimum resources, specialist expertise, and equipment that every educational setting must have access to as a part of their offer of SEN support, and in order to deliver an inclusive education. This would establish a clear, enforceable baseline covering staffing, training, physical materials, and assistive technologies.
- SEN support and ordinarily available provision should be provided before or without the need for an official diagnosis. This would ensure timely intervention that can improve outcomes and prevent escalation of need while a child is waiting for an EHC plan.
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- The Government must not respond to the current challenges by removing them from a system which lacks accountability. Evidence indicates that mainstream schools and multi-academy trusts practicing real inclusivity generate fewer EHC plans, as they meet more students’ needs effectively without them.
- The SEND Tribunal must remain as a backstop of the accountability process and they must be empowered to issue legally binding recommendations to health services. DfE and the Department of Health and social care (DHSC) must systematically monitor SEND Tribunal outcomes and identify local authorities that repeatedly fail to comply with their statutory duties. The Government should undertake focused work with these local authorities to understand why they are so often failing and support them through targeted interventions.
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- The Committee calls for a continuously updated cycles of Initial Teacher Training and the Early Career Framework relating to SEND, and for continuing professional development on SEND to be mandatory for all teachers in mainstream education.
- DfE should mandate that at least one member of a school’s senior leadership team should hold a SENCO qualification. Within four years all new headteachers should hold a SEND-specific qualification.
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- The £6,000 provision per pupil is inadequate and must be automatically uprated each year in line with inflation to prevent further erosion of support for pupils with SEND. It should also be ringfenced.
- A comprehensive review of the National Funding Formula is urgently needed to ensure funding allocations reflect regional differences across the country in, for example, transport costs across rural areas and levels of deprivation.
- Investment in new school facilities and resources should be based on longer-term funding cycles and be underpinned by improved data collection and analysis to ensure investment is targeted at the areas that need it most.
- DfE must work urgently with the Treasury and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to secure the funding necessary to realise the vision of an inclusive mainstream education system. This must include a clear strategy to address the growing SEND-related deficits that have been suspended from local authorities’ accounts by extensions to the statutory override (now until March 2028).
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- SEND should be identified as a priority across the health system and ongoing NHS restructuring must be used as an opportunity to strengthen the role and accountability of health services in supporting children and young people with SEND.
- Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) should be fully engaged in local SEND systems, with clearly defined responsibilities and mechanisms for joint planning and delivery. The seniority, authority and visibility of senior responsible officers for SEND within ICBs must be increased.
- Crucially, this must be backed by appropriate financial investment from the health sector to meet statutory duties, provide timely access to therapies and assessments, and contribute equitably to joint commissioning arrangements.
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- To rebuild trust and establish effective partnership-working in the best interests of the child, parents and carers should be treated as genuine participants in their child’s education and be entitled to participate in discussions and decisions about their child.
- DfE must urgently engage with Ofsted to ensure that the inclusion criterion within the new inspection framework is robust, measurable, and reflective of the experiences of all pupils.
- DfE should introduce mandatory, comprehensive SEND training for all Ofsted inspectors so that they are equipped to identify gaps in provision.
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- DfE should ensure these programmes receive the necessary funding and resources to enable a universal rollout across England.
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- DfE should introduce a dedicated and ringfenced funding stream for SEN support beyond age 16. This would enable further education providers to recruit and retain specialist staff, provide tailored learning resources, and make the reasonable adjustments necessary to ensure mainstream post-16 education is genuinely inclusive.
- Students who, based on past performance, are very unlikely to attain grade 4 in maths or English despite multiple resits, and who would benefit from pursuing a functional skills qualification in maths and/or English, should instead be supported to achieve a pass in that form of qualification.
- The Committee supports the Transport Committee’s call for a universal free bus pass for under-22s to ensure access to education and training.
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- DfE should expand specialist SEND provision by investing in high-quality specialist state schools, specialist ‘resource bases’ in mainstream schools, and other mainstream provision. This should be achieved through shifting funding from some independent specialist schools to better value-for-money state specialist schools”.
Responding to the report, the Children’s Commissioner wrote:
“Children tell me how much they value their education, but where they need extra help to attend and engage in school, they want this to be easily accessible and available locally. I welcome this report’s focus on creating a broader and more inclusive education offer that responds to the daily complexities in children’s lives.
My School Census published last week offers robust evidence that school leaders agree with what children are telling us: that for some, even the best teaching will not be enough without great services wrapped around every child, backed by a set of national standards and an excellent pastoral offer.
Now we must listen to children and act urgently to create a system that meets the needs and ambitions of every child, including those with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities.”
For the Select Committee Press Release see here
For the Report, “Solving the SEND crisis” see here
For an Easy Read version of the Report see here
For the Children’s Commissioner’s Response see here
Original reporting by Family Law Week