Special Needs reforms mean huge changes for already-overstretched teachers: how will they make it all work?

"I’d pay good money to watch a Labour MP spend a week in my classroom," says one teacher: their anger and worry are already impossible to ignore

Illustration: Rosa Harris

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been writing about the likely impact of big changes to England’s Special Educational Needs system on children and young people and their families. But there’s a whole tangle of issues woven into the same conversation about teachers and support staff, and how – in schools, colleges and early-years settings – they are going to be at the heart of what the government has planned: a huge shift away from specialist schools towards mainstream, which blurs into an increase in what will be expected of hundreds of thousands of people who work in education.

The much-delayed education White Paper will be appearing very soon (February 9th is the latest rumour), but a year of whispers, briefings and public pronouncements has already provided a strong sense of what to expect on this score.

The Education Secretary’s big idea is a new drive for mainstream inclusion, so that for the maximum number of SEND kids, “their local school is also the right school”. Her department has already announced £3 billion of funding for the buildings and facilities that will reportedly make this vision real. To quote from the official blurb, that money is being spent on “specialist, calm learning spaces in mainstream schools” – sometimes known as “units” – that mean they “won’t have to travel miles from home to have their needs met, and can instead get support in tailor-made spaces with the right facilities.”

If you want an instant flavour of the shift in policy this entails, try this. As well as calling off the building of a number of mainstream free schools, what will partly fund this is the cancellation of more specialist settings: only 15 out of 92 planned special and alternative provision (AP) free schools are now definitely going ahead, and local councils will choose whether to proceed with another 59 specialist projects, or get per-pupil money to create places in existing schools. As well as being an expression of a renewed belief in inclusion, this is part of the government’s answer to all that noise about the rising cost of Special Needs transport, an issue that is mentioned explicitly in the material announcing the new spending.

So much, then, for buildings: what about what will actually happen in them?

One big theme of all the rumblings and briefings so far has been the prospect of teachers and TAs experiencing a huge increase in their SEND responsibilities. According to one seemingly well-sourced piece in the Times, the reduction of Education, Health and Care Plans and the rights they embody may mean that schools rather than parents negotiate with councils for SEND funding, seemingly on the basis that provision will be delivered collectively (in those “units”) rather than individually.

At the same time, whereas the content of EHCPs – in theory, at least – is usually built around needs that are identified and specified by Educational Psychiatrists, Speech and Language Therapists and other professionals, there will be a new emphasis on SEND kids being identified, and their provision being drawn up, by the people who work in schools. This pretty clear paragraph, for example, is from an article in the ‘i’ paper that ran on December 29th:

Teachers and school staff will be expected to take a far greater role in identifying children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) under reforms to the system expected in the coming year. Specialist SEND units will be set up in mainstream schools in a bid to ease the reliance on legal documents acquired by parents that set out care plans for children... The move will mean more onus placed on teaching staff to both spot and meet the needs of children with SEND.

At which point, another sharp intake of breath. As any SEND parent will know, even though they often deliver inspirational schooling to kids with Special Needs, most staff in mainstream primary and secondary schools are also rushed off their feet, and burdened with big workloads. In the midst of everyday pressures and crises, SEND expertise is sometimes simply beyond their reach. The SENCos (or Special Needs Co-ordinators) who oversee and organise provision are particularly overstretched: according to work done by the National Education Union, in mainstream secondaries and primaries, the share of SENCos who say they have “difficulties with workload most or all of the time” , is 74% and 66% respectively. The result seems to be ever-increasing churn: according recent research commissioned by Schools Week, the number of teaching vacancies mentioning “SENCo” or related terms “soared” from 37,737 in 2018-19 to 76,633 in 2023-24.

We then hit another problem: the measly pay rates of support staff, and a constant crisis of recruitment and retention. This is another aspect of the tangled, troubled context for the huge change the government seems to be planning: if it’s going to be successful, the kind of of sudden skyrocketing of responsibility – and rise in the sheer number of SEND pupils in mainstream – that it seems to entail would demand something close to a revolution in the English schools system. As far as anyone can tell, what the government has planned would mean many more teachers – with vastly upgraded expertise – not just spotting kids’ needs, but deciding on the requisite support methodologies, reaching out to freelance therapists and liaising with councils and central government, while even more of them saw to the everyday teaching of a lot more SEND kids. Clearly, that would take a huge effort, and an equally huge amount of money.

But that is not what is on its way. To zoom out for a minute, great transformations in public-service provision have long seemed to be something that modern governments simply can’t even conceive of, let alone deliver. With good reason, the creation of everything from the NHS to mass social housing looks like something from another age. At a time, moreover, when the economy is stagnating and the government constantly claims to be in an impossible spending position, that impression is even stronger. What you end up with, therefore, is a recurrent gap between talk of big change and what might actually materialise, and the sense that the space between the two is full of dangers.

This much we know. Last week, the government announced a new “landmark SEND teacher training programme” costed at £200m. It will include not just teachers, but college staff, teaching assistants, and people who work in early years settings – and be “delivered flexibly to slot into teachers’ busy schedules”, with both online sessions and in-person coaching. If the money were dedicated to schoolteachers alone, it would work out at £400 per head: stretched this thin, it will amount to much less. It was, however, approvingly greeted by the TV chef and education campaigner Jamie Oliver, who said it was “a proper good start”, and “an amazing moment to all my fellow and fabulous SEND campaigners”, and this guy, for whom words are not nearly enough.

“I’ve got 30 children. Three with EHCPs. One of me.”

The reaction of some teachers has been slightly more sceptical. Rachel Hopkins is the Labour MP for Luton South and South Bedfordshire. A few days ago, she put details of the new training programme on Facebook. Over 1000 comments soon followed, including many posted by teachers. This one is a good example:

Can I have the money for a TA, or are we still pretending magic training will replace actual bodies in the classroom? I’ve got 30 children. Three with EHCPs. One of me. Tell me which “training session” teaches me how to clone myself so I can simultaneously support a child in crisis, keep 29 others learning, and meet the legal requirements of those care plans. I’d pay good money to watch a Labour MP spend a week in my classroom meeting every child’s needs with no additional support. Just one week. Let’s see how that “training” holds up.

So is this:

We have some class sizes of 34. All the training in the world cannot make one individual able to respond to so many different needs in a 55 minute lesson. We need smaller class sizes and more TA support.

Now, on paper at least, there may be an argument for being open to these changes, while remaining cautious. The number of challenges facing the SEND system - and, indeed, education itself - is huge, and change has to start somewhere. Given that properly-funded and rapid transformation will probably not be on offer, perhaps this kind of modest step is the best we can hope for, and should be welcomed in that spirit. It will take a very long time for Special Needs provision to even begin to be put right; for now, as long as it points in roughly the right direction, maybe incremental progress ought to be applauded.

Here, though, is the problem. When it comes to Special Needs, the government does not seem to be in an incremental kind of mood. There is a strong likelihood that other changes to the system will be drastic and quick, with far-reaching consequences. Certainly, the prospect of the rights embodied by EHCPs being removed from kids in mainstream schools - something ministers still refuse to rule out – would be huge. And so you end up with a grimly familiar sense of imbalance: big change when it comes to taking things away, with only comparatively trifling upsides.

If that sounds abstract, it may actually describe things that could soon be very real: a poorly-funded and ill-conceived switch from specialist to mainstream that could leave children and young people with further-degraded support, and no meaningful way for their families to hold anyone to account.

That’s why so many parents are already up in arms. You can also see it in the increasingly angry and fearful mood of people who work in the education system. When the plans for change finally materialise, therefore, it is going to be very interesting to see what the teachers’ unions say: their response, in fact, may very well decide whether many of the SEND changes fly, or sink.

• You can order my memoir Maybe I’m Amazed – about my autistic son James, how we fought through the SEND system, and why music is our most precious source of connection – here

• More on the Save Our Children’s Rights campaign here