Why Trust in SEND Reform Must Be Earned, Not Imposed

The Real Illusion in SEND Reform? That Evidence Replaces Rights

It’s become fashionable in education circles to claim that the SEND system is broken because too many families have been misled into chasing labels and interventions that don’t work. The proposed fix? Strip away individual legal entitlements and put trust in professionals and formula-based funding. But this diagnosis, while superficially tidy, fundamentally misunderstands why parents are turning to the system in droves, and what’s actually broken. This article was written in response to the following articles “Ditching EHCPs could result in better resource allocation” and “SEND provision is the last bastion of unevidenced practice“. The second one annoyed me more.

The current system is indeed under pressure. Parents are indeed exhausted (and frustrated and lacking in trust). Schools are firefighting. Local authorities are going bankrupt. But before we start dismantling the only part of the system that guarantees disabled children anything resembling a right to support, the EHCP, we need to understand why it exists in the first place.

It wasn’t built to reward overzealous parents or to keep the local authority staff in work. It was built because children were being failed. And they still are.

The illusion isn’t the EHCP. It’s the idea that we can trust a system with no accountability.

The suggestion that we replace legally enforceable plans with a weighted, nationally distributed ‘Inclusion Premium’ sounds compelling on the surface. But let’s be honest about what that really means: removing any obligation for a school to deliver what an individual child demonstrably needs, and replacing it with professional discretion and vague oversight.

We’ve tried that. For years, parents were told “trust us, we’ve got it covered” only to watch their children spiral, unheard and unsupported. The reason so many families now “fight” for EHCPs is precisely because they’ve seen what happens without one.

Parents do not spend months gathering reports, sitting in tribunals, and writing witness statements for the fun of it. They do it because it’s the only lever left.

If the EHCP is inflexible, it’s because the system refuses to be Responsive.

There’s a point made in the article by Matt Hood that EHCPs are static, that they freeze a child’s needs in time. But the rigidity of EHCPs isn’t intrinsic to the concept; it’s a symptom of a system that doesn’t properly review, adapt or co-produce. Annual reviews are meant to be dynamic. The problem isn’t the legal right, it’s the refusal to invest proactively in making it work well. They are reviewed yearly and the best practice is repeated discussions between parents and teachers about what is working or the child needs at that time.

Removing the right won’t solve that. It just removes the pressure to try.

Dismissing support tools as ‘pseudo-science’ misses the point entirely.

Critics of current SEND practices love to point out that fidget toys, coloured overlays, wobble cushions and Zones of Regulation don’t have a robust evidence base. But they rarely ask why that evidence is lacking. Or whether the alternative, doing nothing, is any better. Those bemoaning the lack of evidence based practice usually come up empty when asked to suggest anything other than “Quality first teaching”.

Interventions used with neurodivergent children aren’t always about boosting test scores. They’re often about reducing distress, improving regulation, and enabling participation. You can’t always double-blind trial a child’s ability to stay calm enough to learn. But parents and teachers notice when something works. That doesn’t make it “pseudo-medical.” It makes it practical.

The scorn poured on so-called unproven interventions often ignores one critical truth: many of these tools are accommodations, not treatments. If we treated wheelchair ramps or quiet rooms as “placebos,” we’d be rightly outraged. But for sensory or communication differences, there’s still a lingering idea that if we can’t prove it helps everyone, it must help no one. In our SEN school, we have interventions, accommodations, plans, strategies, call them what you want, that help 1 child, just 1. There is no evidence or testable hypothesis that would prove this nationally. And in fact, that strategy may not work next week.

That’s not evidence-informed thinking. That’s bias.

The ‘children are more alike than different’ argument is misleading and dangerous.

A claim repeated with worrying confidence is that most children don’t actually need different provision; that all children benefit from calm, well-sequenced teaching. Of course they do. But that doesn’t mean some don’t also need something more.

Neurodivergent children are not just quirky versions of a typical learner. They often process information, language, and sensory input fundamentally differently. Pretending otherwise doesn’t foster inclusion, it breeds exclusion under the guise of standardisation.

We should be striving for universal design, yes—but we cannot erase the need for reasonable adjustments. You don’t create equity by pretending difference doesn’t exist.

If trust is to replace legal guarantees, it has to be earned first.

A major part of the current dysfunction lies in the lack of trust between families and the system. But this hasn’t come out of nowhere. Trust has been eroded by unmet needs, vague promises, and years of schools and LAs doing their best with too little—and sometimes doing nothing at all.

If you want to build trust, you don’t do it by removing the very mechanisms families use to seek justice. You do it by improving transparency, strengthening the review process, properly resourcing services, and embedding coproduction at every level.

You also build trust by investing in training that gives school staff the confidence and competence to meet diverse needs—without relying on gatekeeping diagnoses or out-of-date myths.

A better system is possible. But only if we stop blaming the families trapped in it.

SEND reform won’t succeed if it begins from the premise that too many children are being labelled or supported. The growth in EHCPs is not a sign that parents have become unreasonable. It’s a sign that schools are no longer able—or allowed—to flex enough without one.

It’s a sign that families are trying to keep their children from falling out of education altogether.

By all means, let’s bring quality assurance into EHCPs. Let’s improve the evidence base. Let’s challenge poor practice. But let’s also stop pretending that the problem is the existence of legally enforceable rights and start recognising that, without them, the most vulnerable children will be the first to fall (further) through the cracks.