Reform to special education needs spending is urgently needed, but Phillipson surely cannot deliver it

“We’re all in favour of reforming the system but that cannot be driven by saving money and taking support away from children.”

This is a very odd government. Last week, following the welfare u-turn, I wrote that it almost certainly could not now pass significant spending reductions, and would likely have to default to a doom-loop of tax rises.

That is no less the case this week than last. But apparently, it’s still trying? The above quotation is from this morning’s report in the Times about Government plans for “reforming help for children with learning difficulties or disabilities, which at present costs the taxpayer £12 billion a year.”

And lo, Labour MPs are once again being complete children about the whole thing. “If they thought taking money away from disabled adults was bad”, chunters one, “watch what happens when they try the same with disabled kids.”

Special Educational Needs and Development (SEND) sits alongside social care in the special category of runaway spending which is kept off Whitehall’s accounts by making it the statutory responsibility of councils, which are now trending hard towards bankruptcy. Part of the reason for that is the relentless rise in the number of pupils with education, health and care plans (EHCPs) – “legally binding documents that spell out Send children’s individual teaching requirements”, per the Daily Telegraph.

At the root of the problem is that there is no cap on the number of pupils who can qualify for EHCPs or other SEND support; it is not concentrated on the tail of a curve but instead assessed case-by-case. The result is that fully one in five state school pupils now have some sort of assistance, and that number is likely only to climb – in Wales, more than half of a recent school cohort was assessed as ‘special needs’, a finding which would feel improbable even if the Senedd had quietly put lead back in the petrol.

The collapse of the stigma which used to surround ‘special needs’ is obviously healthy. But it has meant that there is now nothing preventing parents simply making a play for extra cash and special treatment for their kids; others are exploiting the entitlement of many SEND children to a taxi to school, which alongside sharp practice by the cab companies themselves has led to another ballooning line item.

Given the enormous damage Bridget Phillipson has done to the education system in her one-woman crusade against two decades of cross-party reforms, it is honestly a bit surprising to find her on board with grasping this particular nettle.

But credit where credit is due. Anybody familiar with the recent statistics on SEND provision is forced to conclude either that people are gaming a badly-designed system or that Britain is in the grip of an unprecedented epidemic of impaired learning; the former is, obviously, the wiser conclusion to draw.

Yet based on the experience of the welfare bill, surely this effort is doomed. Sure, the rebels are still sufficiently invested in going through the motions to say that they support reform in principle – but if they are unwilling to entertain the idea that spending is ever too high, or any recipient undeserving, then in what principle?

Nonetheless, anyone who thinks Britian needs to rein in public spending can only salute the Prime Minister for trying. His fitful efforts at good government may simply be proof of how bad he is at politics, but any effort to control SEND spending will be more than we ever attempted.