Hundreds of thousands of children with special needs in England face losing right to extra school support

24 May 2025, 15:57

Children with special needs in England may lose their legal right to extra school support, it has been revealed.

Hundreds of thousands of children with special needs could lose out as a result of the plans under consideration by ministers, according to the Guardian.

Campaigners have warned the move could force thousands more pupils out of mainstream education.

The reforms concern education, health and care plans (EHCPs), statutory documents families have needed for over 10 years to guarantee their child’s legal entitlement to support for conditions including autism spectrum disorder as well as mental health issues.

Scrapping the current system would signal the biggest change in special educational needs and disabilities (Send) provision in over a decade.

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Catherine McKinnell, the school standards minister, has argued the present model was “not delivering”, confirming officials were exploring a new system for Send support.

EHCPs state the specific support a child with Send should be provided in school.

This could involve one-to-one assistance, speech and language therapy, or might involve the use of some specialist equipment.

Schools are not legally obliged to meet a child’s specific needs without EHCPs. In many mainstream state schools - where the majority of pupils with Send are taught - they can be the only place children with Send receive the required specialist help.

McKinnell told the Guardian: “No decisions have been taken yet on how we deliver …. The change we want to see is just better support for children at the earliest stage possible. And clearly the system we’ve inherited is not delivering that.”

“Parents have a real battle to get support that should be ordinarily available in school.” Pressed again, she said: “I think parents would agree that if we had a well-functioning system, if we had that good early support, then you wouldn’t need a complex legal process to access an education.

“Even when families secure an EHCP, it doesn’t necessarily deliver the education that’s been identified … We’re listening to parents. We’re working on a new system. It’s not fixed yet.”

Nearly 600,00 children and young people in England had an EHCP as of January 2024.

But it comes as the NHS is set to open more mental health crisis centres across England in a bid to keep those patients out of 'crowded A&Es', the head of NHS England has said.

The new service, staffed by specialist doctors and nurses, will be open to patients who present symptoms of a mental health crisis, such as suicidal thoughts or psychosis, The Times reported.

Ten NHS trusts have already launched separate units for mental health emergencies, some on the sites of existing A&Es, which are open to walk-in patients are well as those referred to the service by GPs and police.

The scheme is expected to be expanded nationally to dozens of locations as part of a 10-year NHS plan to be published this summer by the Labour government, according to the newspaper.

Sir Jim Mackey, the chief executive of NHS England, told the paper: "Crowded A&Es are not designed to treat people in mental health crisis."

Meanwhile, almost a fifth of families (17%) surveyed across the UK for national disability charity Sense said they had waited more than a year to be seen by children’s social services.

The charity said the current system sees parents having to “fight for the care their childrendeserve”.Its polling, carried out by Censuswide, of 1,000 parents or carers of a disabled child in the UK in February and March this year suggested an average wait of around 210 days for an assessment by social services.

The charity, which said there are 1.8 million disabled children in the UK, said waiting for an assessment leaves families without appropriate support from their local authority.