Special educational needs reform could be a bureaucratic nightmare

Plans to reform support for children with special educational needs in England have been delayed after the government announced its new policy would not be unveiled until 2026, rather than autumn 2025.

However, there has already been some indication of what the government will do. The education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, recently promised to set “clear expectations for schools” on how they work together with pupils’ parents. She also outlined her intention to overhaul the process by which parents can make complaints.

In a statement, Phillipson said: “To help us deliver the most effective set of reforms we can, I have taken the decision to have a further period of co-creation, testing our proposals with the people who matter most in this reform – the families – alongside teachers and other experts.”

The additional wait for the schools white paper that will set out the policy will be disappointing to those who are keen to see change in the system. But it also creates an opportunity to ensure the government gets reform right.

As an expert in inclusive education, I argue the call for closer collaboration and the explicit mention of family involvement are excellent signs. However, the government should rethink its framing of parental engagement as a set of expectations that schools must meet.

On paper, this approach looks as if it could safeguard the support children are entitled to. But in reality it risks reducing what can be a mutually respectful and beneficial partnership to a transactional checklist and added bureaucracy.

What is needed instead is effective partnerships with families based on authentic engagement and courageous conversations, based on respect, openness and compassion.

This change in culture can be supported by improved teacher training. This should promote inclusion as a shared responsibility, rather than as sheer accountability.

For example, for children with additional needs, transitions in their educational journey are important and potentially difficult moments. These include starting school, moving between primary and secondary, between mainstream and alternative educational provision, and into adulthood.

Making family involvement happen

Parents and carers can and should play an important role in their children’s education, and their voices should have power. This is particularly vital for children with special educational needs and disabilities.

Parents know their children best. They see their strengths, struggles, and the little things that make a big difference. Irrespective of this, they are routinely excluded or sidelined from decisions about their child’s education.

A recent House of Commons committee report on special educational needs highlights that many parents feel treated as inconvenient or unreasonable. These adversarial dynamics have severely eroded trust in the system.

Findings from an all-party parliamentary group inquiry into “loss of the love of learning” reveal that parents lose confidence in formal education: it’s perceived as a source of anxiety, stress and exclusion for children whose needs may require different teaching and learning approaches.

For these reasons, parental involvement must be central to reform of special educational needs support. Joint planning, emotional support, and coordination at every stage with teachers and others involved in the child’s journey is needed. This can help children adjust and reach emotional and developmental milestones.

We need to move away from a situation where parents are seen only as receivers of expertise, not as experts themselves.

Parents’ knowledge and experiences of disability and difference can lead to real change. It’s right that they are involved in decision making, at school and community level and in national consultations on education policy.

Without real input in decision making, the risk is that parental involvement becomes tokenistic rather than transformative, especially when deep-rooted systemic injustices remain in education for children with special educational needs.

Decent parental engagement requires other changes to the system. Children with special educational needs and disabilities often receive support from different services. These need to be coherent so that parent and carer involvement does not become fragmented. The Education Select Committee’s call for a joint workforce strategy on special educational needs and disabilities, including health and care services, must be taken seriously.

Equally, trust and respect needs to be reinstated towards teachers and Sencos: teachers who have an additional role as their school’s special educational needs coordinator. Despite often working in extremely hard conditions and with limited resources, teachers often absorb demonising attitudes and blame.

Sencos are not allocated the time and continued training required for their role. They also do not have the power to make strategic decisions on inclusion.

The Labour manifesto promised to “light the fire” of opportunity for every child. By truly bringing families into their children’s education, the upcoming white paper on schools could be that spark. Otherwise, it risks becoming another layer of bureaucracy in an already overwhelmed system.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Paty Paliokosta, Kingston University

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Paty Paliokosta does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.