SEND Provision: South-east England

Steve Darling Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2025 Westminster Hall

[Steve Darling (Torbay) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) on securing this debate. Although Torbay is not in the south-east, I am sure that a lot of our SEND issues are reflected there.

A recent Ofsted report on our SEND provision identified widespread failings for children with SEND and disabilities. Although a lot of colleagues have highlighted challenges with local authorities, we must also reflect that the health service needs to play its part in driving the positive change that we need for our young people. Only yesterday, health bosses failed to turn up and play their part at a continuous improvement meeting for youngsters in Torbay, even though that Ofsted report was under discussion. I would like to know how the Minister is holding the health system to account on this issue, not just local authorities and education departments.

As an example, I am aware of one failing in Torbay where a decision should have been made by the end of March for a youngster on where their next year’s placement would start in September. They were only told the day before they started their GCSEs that their placement was going to be changed, which, un-shockingly, sent them into a meltdown, and they underperformed massively.

I would particularly like to hear the Minister’s reflections on a couple of areas. One is the safety valve system. That is very much financially driven, but what investigations has the Minister made into how that system may have driven any improvement of the outcomes of SEND pupils, or not? What are the Minister’s reflections on the future of the safety valve system, because it has some real challenges?

I would also welcome the Minister’s reflections on the ladder system that is applied in Torbay, in which the level of intervention with a child is increased quietly, bit by bit, from mainstream education to a high level of intervention, and so on, until the right level is found. But to achieve that level, the youngster has to have failed repeatedly in school. That reinforces trauma both for the youngster and the family involved, through failure after failure. Surely that ladder system cannot be appropriate for the youngsters or their families. It seems a very wicked way, rather than sending those youngsters directly into the appropriate places.

I will give a couple of examples from my constituency. Rachel has to home tutor her youngster because provision was withdrawn. Shaan had to give up work because there was inadequate provision for her youngster. A non-verbal autistic youngster had two really good offers for education, but neither was accepted by the local authority. I look forward to the Minister’s reflections because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells identified, these are some of the most vulnerable youngsters in our communities, and they deserve better.

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[Catherine McKinnell]

Yes, we absolutely recognise that the current system is really difficult for parents, carers and young people to navigate, and it is not delivering the outcomes we want to see. While we will set out the longer-term approach to reform in the schools White Paper in the autumn, we are clear that the changes we make must improve support for families, stop parents from having to fight for that support and education, and protect the effective provision already in place. We have given that reassurance. We know that sustainable reform will take some time, but we have already begun the work to ensure that children and young people are getting the support they need.

We have introduced the regional improvements for standards and excellence advisers to work with mainstream schools, where we know outcomes need to be better. We want to ensure that all pupils in those schools can achieve and thrive, whatever their background, so we are targeting the support where that challenge is currently greatest. I recently had the opportunity to see that in action in Kent, when I visited Astor secondary school in Dover with Sir Kevan Collins. We met school and trust leaders, as well as the RISE adviser and the supporting organisation, Mulberry Schools Trust. We listened intently to the school’s experience of the programme so far. It is early days, but looking incredibly positive and it was good to see that support being put in place for schools that have been struggling for far too long.

We are also building a robust evidence base on what works to drive inclusive education, including through the creation of the expert advisory group for inclusion, led by Tom Rees. We are extending the partnerships for inclusion of neurodiversity in schools—the PINS programme—to a further cohort of around 1,200 additional mainstream primary schools, to build that teacher and staff capacity to identify and better meet the needs of neurodivergent children in mainstream primary schools. The programme is supported by the Department for Education and the Department for Health, because we absolutely recognise the challenges outlined by a number of hon. Members, including my hon. Friends the Members for Worthing West (Dr Cooper) and for Rochester and Strood (Lauren Edwards), about making sure that we work together with the Department for Health where that is needed.

[Steve Darling]

Will the Minister give way?

[Catherine McKinnell]

I will, but I am conscious of time and want to respond to all the issues raised.

[Steve Darling]

Can the Minister provide reassurance on how she is holding health services to account? They can be part of the solution, if they play their part.

[Catherine McKinnell]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. What we want is a system in which local partners work in partnership. Currently, that is inspected by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission. I will come to the particular examples in Kent and the south-east that hon. Members have raised.

We want to support and challenge local authorities and health authorities to ensure that partnership is real, working and—most of all—delivering outcomes for children. Everything we do is focused on improving those outcomes, which is why we are prioritising early intervention and inclusive provision. We know that early intervention prevents unmet need from escalating. It supports children to achieve their goals alongside their peers, and we have a clear target for more children to meet their early development goals. We are absolutely laser-focused on improving those outcomes for children.

On accountability and inspection, Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission jointly inspected the local SEND provision. I read with great concern the inspection reports for Oxfordshire and Bracknell Forest, both of which have been inspected under the new Ofsted-CQC framework. They identified significant concerns about the experiences and outcomes for children with SEND in the local areas. The issues that have been raised are incredibly serious, and DfE officials and NHS England advisers are meeting regularly with leaders and representatives from schools, colleges and parent-carer forums to continue to review and challenge the progress against the improvement plans.

The Department has also appointed SEND advisers to provide advice and challenge to local leaders. That is happening is Bracknell Forest, Kent, Surrey, Slough, Oxfordshire, West Sussex, Medway, Milton Keynes, and the Isle of Wight. There are also additional packages of support to provide training and advice in those local areas. It is vital that rapid action is taken to improve SEND services where weaknesses are identified, and that leaders accept collective responsibility and accountability for delivering on these improvements. There is a relentless focus on driving improvement, supporting where we can and where necessary, but also ensuring that good practice, where it emerges, is spread. That is what we want to focus on with our reforms.

The number of education, health and care plans has increased each year since they were introduced in 2014. As of January 2025, there were over 630,000 children and young people with an EHCP—an increase of 10% in the last year alone. As a result of flaws and lack of capacity in the system to meet lower-level need, additional strain has been placed on specialist services, which has had a detrimental impact on families’ experiences of accessing support and contributed to creating an unsustainable system.

Many parents feel that the only way they can get any support for their child is by going through the EHCP process. However, independently published insights show that extensive improvements to the system, using early intervention along with better resourcing of mainstream schools, could create much better outcomes for children. I know that is what many constituents want to see, including those of my hon. Friends the Members for Aylesbury (Laura Kyrke-Smith) and for East Thanet (Ms Billington).

The insights show that more children and young people could have their needs met in a mainstream setting, rather than a specialist placement. That would ensure that they could go to school locally and help to tackle some of the incredible transport challenges and costs, as well as the time that young people spend travelling around. They should be able to go to their local school. We also know that it takes a vast workforce, from teachers to teaching assistants, early years educators and health professionals, to help children thrive. We are investing of each one of these to improve outcomes and experiences across the country.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven (Chris Ward) said, high-quality teaching is central to ensuring that pupils with SEND are given the best possible opportunities to achieve. That is why we are implementing a coherent offer of high-quality teacher development for all teachers. It begins with their initial teaching training and goes into their early career teaching support, so that all teachers have the right skills and support to enable them to support students with special educational needs. It will enable teachers to identify those needs and to signpost if needed, as well as to adapt their teaching according to different learning abilities.