20 May 2025

Last week, IPSEA legal team member Liz Devlin joined Contact, parents, carers, MPs, and officials from the Department for Education (DfE) at a roundtable hosted by Ben Maguire, MP for North Cornwall. The discussion focused on how to improve support for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) who do not have an education, health and care (EHC) plan.

Building the case for stronger legal duties

At the centre of the conversation was a joint proposal from IPSEA and Contact to make SEN Support statutory. Currently, schools are expected to use their ‘best endeavours’ to meet the needs of pupils with special educational needs (SEN). However, this duty lacks clarity and enforceability, making it difficult to ensure consistent and effective support in practice.

Contact’s CEO, Anna Bird, introduced our joint proposal to amend Section 66 of the Children and Families Act 2014, aiming to strengthen the legal duties around SEN Support. The proposed legislative amendment has been drafted by IPSEA’s legal team.

We also presented findings from a joint parent survey by Contact and IPSEA, which received over 2,000 responses and highlighted widespread concerns with how SEN Support is delivered. Notably, 60% of parents said their child had avoided school because their needs were not being met.

The devastating impact on children, young people and their parents

Parents at the roundtable shared powerful accounts of what happens when SEN Support falls short. They described:

• Simple but vital adjustments like movement breaks being denied
• Deteriorating mental health in children left without the right support
• Children being told they were ‘lazy’ or ‘not dyslexic enough’ to qualify for help
• Their struggles in trying to get schools to understand masking
• Parent-blame and not being believed when trying to explain their children’s SEN, with multiple parents describing how they were accused by their child’s school of fabricated or induced illness (commonly known as FII)
• The heartbreaking and extreme consequences of children not having their SEN identified, either early enough or at all, including one child’s attempt to take their own life.

One parent spoke about how their child didn’t meet the threshold for a special school but couldn’t cope in a mainstream setting because the SEN Support they vitally need isn’t being made available. Others described how their children’s needs were overlooked or dismissed simply because they were academically able.

Why change is needed

Families’ experiences illustrate the large-scale problem with SEN Support in its current form - while SEN Support should be provided, it can be inconsistent and despite the consequences when the right support is not put in place, which in many cases can be devastating, there’s no clear accountability.

During the roundtable, questions were raised about how a statutory duty would operate in practice, and whether this would place an unnecessary burden on schools – but we explained that schools are already required under the SEND Code of Practice to identify SEN, and also to plan and provide for it. Our proposed legislative change wouldn’t introduce extra work for schools, but it would create legal obligations out of existing guidance, and those obligations would be clear and enforceable.

Currently, it is extremely difficult to challenge a breach of the ‘best endeavours’ duty. A clear, specific legal requirement would enable better enforcement - potentially through Judicial Review or complaints to a strengthened Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO). We reiterated IPSEA’s call to extend the LGSCO’s remit to include complaints about schools - something the Ombudsman has itself called for.

The need for improved initial and ongoing training for school staff was also discussed, reflecting a recurring concern raised by parents.

The bigger picture

The roundtable also explored the wider consequences of unmet SEN, including rising school exclusions and increasing levels of school-related anxiety. One parent spoke about being at risk of losing their job because their child was unable to attend school due to a lack of support. We know from the work we do that this echoes the situation many families face when their children cannot attend school due to their SEN not being met. In closing, we urged the Government to take a long-term view. While strengthening SEN Support will require investment, the cost of doing nothing is far greater. Without action, we risk pushing more families into hardship by forcing more parents out of work, and we risk failing a generation of children whose education should be protected by law.

Making SEN Support statutory is not about placing additional burdens on schools - it’s about giving legal weight to what should already be happening. It’s about ensuring that children and young people get the support they are entitled to, and that this support is consistent, no matter which school they attend or where they live.