Labour’s Special Needs Overhaul Is at Risk of Unravelling
The Institute for Government says the plan to replace most education, health and care plans with mainstream support by 2030 may be too optimistic, because schools and parents have an incentive to secure a plan before they are phased out. Several councils project that nearly one pupil in ten will hold one by 2029.
The report’s author Amber Dellar names the trap precisely: “There’s a ‘use it before you lose it’ dynamic, as schools and parents have an incentive to secure EHCPs before they are phased out.” A reform designed to reduce reliance on the plans is, in the interval before it takes effect, giving every family a reason to apply for one. The number that should concern anyone with a child in an English state school, whether or not they have special needs, is what this does to budgets: the institute calculates that the extra costs could absorb around two-thirds of the schools funding uplift over this parliament. That is money that would otherwise reach every classroom. The Department for Education pushes back on the record and without hedging: “The figures in this report are speculative and there is no evidence that proposed reforms are driving additional EHCP demand... we are completely committed to the implementation timelines set out in the schools white paper.” The work was funded by the Nuffield Foundation. Both things can be true at once — the projection is a projection, and the incentive it describes is real and already visible in council forecasts. What would settle it is the next set of EHCP application figures, broken down by the year the reform was announced. Watch for those, and for whether the 2030 date starts to move.