12 March 2025

The House of Commons Education Committee is carrying out an inquiry entitled ‘Solving the SEND crisis’. MPs are focusing on “how to achieve both short term stability and long-term sustainability for the SEND system to improve experiences and outcomes for children and young people”. 

IPSEA made a written submission to the committee, which we can share now that it has been published.

Read our submission 

We said in our submission that the key to resolving the SEND crisis lies in finding a way to ensure that children and young people receive the provision and support the law says they should have, not in changing the law. Diluting legal rights and entitlements would reduce what schools and local authorities are required to provide for children and young people with SEND but would not reduce their needs. 

We also said that the fact that SEN Support can’t be enforced enables non-inclusive practice in mainstream schools. This is at odds with the Government’s policy of greater inclusion of children and young people with SEND in mainstream settings. 

Catriona Moore, IPSEA’s policy manager, said: 

“There is no magic solution to the SEND crisis. The choice is either to insist on compliance with the current legal framework, which offers legal rights and protections to children and young people, or to change it. IPSEA firmly supports the former – children and young people’s existing rights to an education which meets their needs must be upheld and protected, not weakened. But if the law is changed, policy-makers need to consider how – when children and young people so often struggle to get the special educational provision they need within the current rights-based framework – this situation could possibly be improved by diluting or removing their statutory right to support.” 

We await with interest the committee’s recommendations to ministers, as well as details on the Government’s plans for supporting children and young people with SEND in the future.

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