Government Launches new SEND Review Green Paper

On March 29th 2022 the government launched their much anticipated SEND and Alternative Provision Review Green paper.

This outlines the changes they are proposing to improve the lives of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities.

The review focuses on  SEND alongside alternative provision and outlines some suggested key changes. These include:

• A desire to increase  early intervention for children with SEND and introduce a single system combining SEND and alternative education provision.
• The creation of new national standards across education, health and care to build for a higher performing SEND system.
• A national framework for councils for banding and tariffs of high needs support to offer clarity on the level of support expected, and put the system on a financially sustainable footing in the future.
• A legal duty on councils to introduce “local inclusion plans” across early years, schools and post-16 education with health and care services in a bid to provide greater clarity over which agency has responsibility for services.
• The creation of a “local inclusion dashboard” which will set out the role and responsibilities of partners offering provision for children and young people with SEND aged 0 to 25.
• An updated Local Area SEND Inspection Framework from Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission will be used to hold local authorities to account over failures to create inclusion plans.
• Education, Health and Care plans (EHCP) to be moved online, to make them more flexible, reducing bureaucracy and supporting parents to make informed choices via a list of appropriate placements tailored to their child’s needs, meaning less time spent researching the right school.
• Plans to “streamline” the redress process which will mean tribunals will only be used for the most challenging cases.
• The green paper also puts forward a raft of proposals to improve mainstream provision for pupils with SEND based on plans highlighted in the recent schools white paper including a duty on all schools to part of a multi-academy trust by 2030 and plans to increase total investment in core schools budgets by £7bn by 2024/25. (CYP Now, 2022)

A new website for the review has been created and you can find out more by clicking here:

This is a 16 week consultation and you can make comments on these proposed changes up until the 22nd July 2022, 11:45pm. To read the full green paper follow the link: READ THE FULL SEND REVIEW GREEN PAPER.