15 January 2025

Another report has been published highlighting the failure of the education system to make sure that children and young people with SEND have the support they need to enable them to learn and make progress. 

The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) shines a spotlight on the lack of solutions to the SEND crisis from the Government. The MPs on the committee reiterate the National Audit Office’s recent criticisms of the Department for Education (DfE) for failing to plan ahead to meet children and young people’s needs.

The report says, “The SEN system is inconsistent, inequitable and not delivering in line with expectations, which inevitably undermines parents’ confidence in it.”

MPs have made a number of recommendations to the DfE on how it should improve the way it works with other government departments and with local authorities. The emphasis is on finding a way to make the system for supporting children and young people with SEND as financially stable as possible. 

The PAC says they received a very high number of written submissions from individual parents and carers. One of the main concerns drawn to MPs’ attention was “the need to strengthen accountability and ensure local areas meet their statutory duties”, which was the main focus of IPSEA’s own submission. The committee recommends that, over the next 12 months, the DfE should work with local authorities and the Ministry of Justice to improve local authority decision-making by analysing SEND Tribunal decisions. 

Catriona Moore, IPSEA’s policy manager, said: 

“The Public Accounts Committee clearly recognises that local authorities have a statutory responsibility to ensure that children receive the support they need in education settings. If the Government isn’t already analysing SEND Tribunal decisions and making sure that local authorities prioritise lawful decision-making, it needs to start doing this without delay. 

“The report refers in a number of places to ‘parental confidence’ – but this won’t improve until parents can rely on local authorities and schools fulfilling their duties to children. As we have said many times before, reducing the adversarial nature of the SEND system relies on local authorities making legally correct decisions that don’t need to be appealed.” 

The House of Commons Education Select Committee is carrying out a separate inquiry into ‘solving the SEND crisis’. We will be submitting written evidence to that inquiry later this month.