Dave Clements asks what's behind the rising tide of demand for special-needs education – and what the government can do about it. PLUS: Battle of Ideas debate on neurodiversity and over-diagnosis.
Dave Clements gets somethings right here but fundamentally misapprehends the value of EHCPs. They are 'bureaucratic' and 'oversubscribed' precisely because they are the only thing left for parents that WORK! John Harris gets it right! "...the reason for the massive uptake in EHCPs is that ‘informal special-needs provision in schools has become so unreliable that the only way of having any chance of securing what a child needs is to apply for one’..."
Further, EHCPs can generate the protection of SENDisTribunals where decisions are made with regard to the SEN child's needs NOT to LEA budgets! And LEA professionals involved in assessment are more free to say what they really think about expensive placements since there is "no property in witness" under High Court jurisdictions. So the last thing we need will be 'a radical shake-up' if that means Bridget Phillipson is allowed to pull the rug on them, as now widely rumoured!
If she does this would put the loss of the winter fuel allowance debacle into the status of a minor tweak by comparison. The Pupil Premium scam, based on free school meal numbers failed because schools were not obliged to spend the money on individual pupils taking FSMs! So this closely mirrors what will happen if non-targeted monies go to schools for SENs without EHCPs - it will no doubt help fund Pride flags to fly over non-binary sports fields!?
DC also appears to be at a loss to explain "...Why is it that nearly one in five children have a special educational need? Why are the needs of one in 20 children deemed so significant that they have been issued EHCPs? What’s going on?...". But these proportions expressed as percentiles are very close to the statistical cut offs of 1 and 2 standard deviations from average on the normal distribution scale that the Warnock Report (1978) used in the original definition of SENs and to differentiate them from the far more numerous children with 'additional needs'. These cut-offs offered real transparency to both parents and professionals who could use them as guidance for the significance of their results (expressed in percentiles) obtained on their norm- referenced tests, used in SEN assessments. These definitions were consolidated in the original Ed.Act 1981 which legally established 'Statements' of SENs, the precursor of EHCPs formalised in Part 3 Children's Act 2010.
Just as 'mainstreaming' was used to undermine the utility of 'Statements of SEN' and countered the requests for parental applications, we now see the dogma of "inclusion" being used to pave the way for pulling the demand for EHCPs! It probably also heralds the end of LEAs employing Ed.Psychs. directly as there will no longer be a statutory obligation for them to undertake on behalf of the local authority.
The cancellation of EHCPs will be by far the biggest negative impact of the DEI "Inclusion" bandwagon on the compulsory education enterprise that we have seen so far!
Dr Dave Buck C.Psychol Consultant Educational Psychologist & former OfTED Inspector of SEN.
Dave Clements gets somethings right here but fundamentally misapprehends the value of EHCPs. They are 'bureaucratic' and 'oversubscribed' precisely because they are the only thing left for parents that WORK! John Harris gets it right! "...the reason for the massive uptake in EHCPs is that ‘informal special-needs provision in schools has become so unreliable that the only way of having any chance of securing what a child needs is to apply for one’..."
Further, EHCPs can generate the protection of SENDisTribunals where decisions are made with regard to the SEN child's needs NOT to LEA budgets! And LEA professionals involved in assessment are more free to say what they really think about expensive placements since there is "no property in witness" under High Court jurisdictions. So the last thing we need will be 'a radical shake-up' if that means Bridget Phillipson is allowed to pull the rug on them, as now widely rumoured!
If she does this would put the loss of the winter fuel allowance debacle into the status of a minor tweak by comparison. The Pupil Premium scam, based on free school meal numbers failed because schools were not obliged to spend the money on individual pupils taking FSMs! So this closely mirrors what will happen if non-targeted monies go to schools for SENs without EHCPs - it will no doubt help fund Pride flags to fly over non-binary sports fields!?
DC also appears to be at a loss to explain "...Why is it that nearly one in five children have a special educational need? Why are the needs of one in 20 children deemed so significant that they have been issued EHCPs? What’s going on?...". But these proportions expressed as percentiles are very close to the statistical cut offs of 1 and 2 standard deviations from average on the normal distribution scale that the Warnock Report (1978) used in the original definition of SENs and to differentiate them from the far more numerous children with 'additional needs'. These cut-offs offered real transparency to both parents and professionals who could use them as guidance for the significance of their results (expressed in percentiles) obtained on their norm- referenced tests, used in SEN assessments. These definitions were consolidated in the original Ed.Act 1981 which legally established 'Statements' of SENs, the precursor of EHCPs formalised in Part 3 Children's Act 2010.
Just as 'mainstreaming' was used to undermine the utility of 'Statements of SEN' and countered the requests for parental applications, we now see the dogma of "inclusion" being used to pave the way for pulling the demand for EHCPs! It probably also heralds the end of LEAs employing Ed.Psychs. directly as there will no longer be a statutory obligation for them to undertake on behalf of the local authority.
The cancellation of EHCPs will be by far the biggest negative impact of the DEI "Inclusion" bandwagon on the compulsory education enterprise that we have seen so far!
Dr Dave Buck C.Psychol Consultant Educational Psychologist & former OfTED Inspector of SEN.
https://www.academyofideas.uk/p/can-we-solve-the-special-needs-crisis?r=5dlg3q&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/07/12/poorest-children-grades-pupil-premium-centre-social-justice/
https://dbuck.substack.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-david-buck-b6a79747/details/publications/