Review · News Desk
The prime minister has insisted he is "personally very, very focused" on reforming special educational needs (SEND), describing it as "a broken system". Andy Burnham said the issue needed to be "worked through" during a visit to Derby last week but added he "can't fix SEND in three months", in reference to his time in office. Derbyshire has been monitored by the government for its SEND performance since a government regulator found "widespread and systemic" failings in 2024.
Leaders in the county are facing a record annual increase in demand for support from families and have blamed it on parents rushing to get support due to uncertainty about the government's plans to overhaul the system. Burnham was asked for an update on the government's plans as he visited Rolls-Royce on Thursday. "We will have to work that through," he said.
"It's not a reform that it would be right to rush because of how critical it is... but you know, we have laid out a plan for SEND reform and we'll see it through. "I'm personally very very focused on it. It is part of a whole change in the way we support young people and families." Burnham said SEND reform will be looked at as part of "an overall change to the [education] system" and incorporated in the Milburn Review into young people and work, which is due to be published next month.
"I can't fix SEND in three months," he said. "I wish I could but that simply wouldn't be possible - but there shouldn't be any doubt of my commitment to fix it. "It is a broken system.
I would absolutely accept that characterisation. It cannot be the case in the future that we spend millions and millions of pounds as a country in battling families who are trying to fight for what's right for their kids. "We've got to turn this system completely around in the other direction and that's what we will do." Alan Graves, the Reform UK leader of Derbyshire County Council, recently told the BBC the council continued to face scrutiny from the government on its performance, despite previous hopes it was no longer on a SEND "cliff-edge" .
About 80% of Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) - the legal documents entitling children to support for their needs from the council - are not issued within the legal 20-week timeframe in Derbyshire, and the authority is reporting a £3m overspend in the area for this financial quarter. The council recently announced it will spend £1m over the next year restructuring its SEND services in the hopes of creating a more sustainable model and improving legal compliance. Simon Mabbott, Derbyshire's cabinet member for SEND and education, has called for more clarity from the government on its plans.
"While I support the government's commitment to SEND reform, it is important that councils and families are provided with greater certainty about the future direction and timescales for change," he said. "Local authorities are currently managing rising demand within a system that all parties acknowledge is under strain, and clarity around reform proposals will help ensure that services can be planned effectively and that families receive the support they need as early as possible." Mabbott said the council currently delivers well over 10,000 EHCPs, up by over 100% since 2022. Katy's nine-year-old son Theo is autistic and has ADHD.
He has been out of full-time education since being permanantly excluded from his mainstream school in 2024. She said Derbyshire County Council spent over 20 months finalising her son's EHCP - well over the legal deadline of eight weeks - and had only agreed to back-pay part of the money she has spent trying to find alternative provision for Theo while awaiting action from the council, She said the authority had told her it hopes to find a school for Theo in autumn 2027. "They have stuck to no legal guidelines, no legal deadlines," she said.
"The communication with them has been horrific. I have had to leave my job because I have no choice. Trying to fight for Theo is more than a full-time job.
"I have said to them on many occasions, you have stolen me being a mum to my child, because I have had to be so much more to him than being his mum. "They have broken me as a mum, as a woman." Katy said she has no faith in the prime minister's pledge that the government will reform the system for the better for families like hers. "I have zero faith in any of them that they are ever going to do anything", she said.
"They're forever looking for a scapegoat." Derbyshire County Council has been approached for comment on the family's experience. The government published plans to reform the system under Keir Starmer's leadership earlier this year. Under government plans, by 2035, only children with the most complex needs will qualify for EHCPs, and the support they will be legally entitled to will be set out in new specialist provision packages , external .
The County Councils Network recently warned that councils' special educational needs and disabilities deficits were growing "even more rapidly and are on course to reach a record £10.4bn by March 2028", despite the government committing to paying up to 90% of deficits accumulated up to March this year.
Source: BBC
