6 October 2025

A report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) on SEND spending, published on Friday, seems to suggest that spending money on special educational provision and support to meet the needs of children and young people creates a ‘risk’ that these children and young people will continue to need support as they move into adulthood. This framing is concerning. It is an inescapable truth that disabled children grow into disabled adults, and this can’t be changed by reducing the support available to them in school.

Children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), and their families, are not to blame for the current SEND crisis and the system they find themselves in. There is a robust legal framework that makes clear how schools and local authorities should identify and meet children and young people’s special educational needs and support them to achieve the best possible outcomes. This should be done through early intervention, cooperation and a focus on each child and young person as an individual. 

The Government’s planned SEND reforms must focus on making the education system work for all children as it should, with the right of every child to an education that meets their needs applied and enforced – as the House of Commons Education Committee made clear in its recent report on ‘Solving the SEND crisis’. Children’s special educational needs will not disappear simply because someone decides they cost too much to meet.

As our Senior Solicitor, Georgina Downard, told the Education Committee earlier this year, the decision that needs to be made is whether children and young people with SEND are important enough to prioritise and fund: “Any decision that they are not would amount to the public endorsement of the devaluing of children and young people with special educational needs in this country.”

This IFS report also fails to recognise the cost – to children and young people themselves, to their families and to society as a whole – of not providing support when it is needed. This is something the Government must consider in any reforms to the SEND system.

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