Children with special needs in England may lose legal right to school support | Special educational needs

Hundreds of thousands of children with special needs may lose their legal entitlement to additional school support England Under the plans that the ministers are looking, the step warning by activists may force thousands of students from prevailing education.

Reforms relate to education, health and care (EHCPS), and the legal documents on which families have relied for more than a decade to ensure their children’s right to support conditions such as autism spectrum disorder and mental health issues.

The regime will move away from the largest transformation in providing special needs and educational needs (SEND) since 2014, and risks a violent reaction from parents, charities and lawyers.

He said a 2024 report from the National Audit Office The system was not financially financiallyWith the number of EHCPs by 140 % since 2015, and many The councils that manage the deficit From more than 100 million pounds.

Catherine McKinil, Minister of School Standards, said the current model “does not provide”, and confirmed that officials are developing a new system to send support. She refused to completely exclude or replace EHCPS.

EHCPS determines the careful support that a child who sends him in school must receive, which is likely to be individual assistance, speech and language therapy, or teaching strategies specially designed or specialized equipment.

Without EHCP, schools are not subject to a legal duty to meet the specific needs of the child.

For many families, EHCP is the only mechanism they can use to secure a specialized assistance for their children, especially in major public schools where most children who send.

Some plans apply to private schools, which are prepared to provide high needs. Private schools are not legally required to submit EHCPS and the councils are not obligated to finance them, although some do this by agreement.

When asked whether the ministers would fail or restrict EHCPS, MCKINNELLL said: “No decisions have yet been taken on how to introduce us … The change we want to see is just better support for children in the first possible stage. It is clear that the system we inherited does not provide that.”

“Parents have a real battle to obtain support, which must be usually available at school,” she added. “I think parents agree that if we have a good system, if we get this good early support, you will not need a complex legal process to reach education,” she said.

“Even when families believe EHCP, they do not necessarily offer the education that has been identified … We listen to parents. We are working on a new system. It has not yet been fixed.”

Dam Christine Lyhan, strategic adviser to the Ministry of Education in the transmission, said that the government was wondering whether EHCPS was the “right car”.

On Friday, the government announced the expansion of 3 million pounds to support it early for each child (Elsec), who integrates speech and language specialists in nurseries and schools to determine the transmission needs earlier.

Machinel said the Elsec program, which has already supported 20,000 children, will be extended for another year and expands to reach thousands of children.

Elsec was described as an example of how to provide support previously, without having an external diagnosis or long assessments. “This is part of the teachers of the set of tools. The more we can do this in the first stage, the more we can save families the challenge and tension of having to search for support.”

More than 576,000 children and youth in England had EHCP as of January 2024. However, half of the new plans were released on time last year, according to government statistics. Hundreds of families are waiting for more than a year.

The regime became steeped that more than 21,000 parents appealed to the courts last year, and often only for a basic evaluation or judgment. Families won 95 % of cases.

Since he took office last July, exhaustion She pledged to address long -term challenges within the submission of the transmission, which was described as hostile to families, with the aim of creating a more comprehensive and efficient system.

Activists say legal protection at the heart of the ruling should not be sacrificed.

“Hundreds of thousands of children rely on these plans to go to school safely and learn. This will represent a four -decade basic break from political consensus that disabled children do not need legal guarantees to reach education. Without this, the government sends more children outside the school and a system that does not have simply meeting their needs.”

“We will not accept the removal of the rights of disabled children without fighting. This is not related to improving the ruling-it is related to providing funds. If EHCPS is transferred from private schools, the prevailing schools will lose early schools outside private schools as well,” said Tania Terraro, the director participating in special needs Jungle.

“This action government has launched a full attack on the disabled of all ages, including PIP [personal independence payments] Global credit discounts from less than 22, including disabled youth are unable to work. Do they want to support the disabled people to die or not? “