Tat Westmorland Primary School are small, between five and eight pupils, and the atmosphere is calm. "Pupils, and their families, appreciate the great lengths that staff go to for them," Ofsted, the inspectorate, wrote after a visit in July, in which it judged the school "good". There are 80 pupils on the roll, but Westmorland is growing fast. This year it opened a secondary campus.
Westmorland is one of 35 schools for children with special educational needs and disabilities () run by Witherslack Group, a private company. It in turn is owned by Mubadala Capital, a sovereign-wealth fund based in Abu Dhabi. You might wonder what attracts an Emirati private-equity company to a special-needs school in Chorley, an old mill-town in Lancashire. The answer helps explain just how broken England's special-needs system has become.
In the past decade spending on children with in England has almost doubled, reaching £11.6bn ($15.5bn). Yet even as costs have soared, no one thinks the system is working (Scotland and Wales have different systems which are less problematic). Teachers say they cannot cope; children are suffering; parents are pulling their hair out.
is a broad category: it spans communication, cognition and learning, physical and sensory needs, and mental health. The number of children with has risen steadily across the world for three decades. There is debate about how much of this is due to changes in society versus changes in diagnostic practices. Most experts say it is both. The covid-19 pandemic did not help.
Spend time in a classroom, and you will see pupils with real difficulties. "I now see far more children with limited social skills, not interacting with other children, unable to sit still, just not ready for school," says an educational psychologist. England, however, has devised a uniquely bad system for supporting them. Its problems stem from the 2014 Children and Families Act -- indeed they are a case study of how law can produce unintended consequences.
The act set out to enshrine "parent power", granting parents a legal right to financial support for their child based on an assessment, called an education, health and care plan (). These plans were supposed to be for children with severe needs. Critically, however, the money would follow the pupil. And at the same time other support -- such as teaching assistants and speech-and-language services -- was pared back due to funding cuts.
The result is an all-or-nothing system, which guarantees conflict. Schools tend to get extra support only if they can show a child is not succeeding. Their incentive is to get pupils onto plans, but more widely secondary schools in particular are pushed to focus on attainment over inclusion. Cash-strapped councils (which foot the bill for children with s) try to minimise costs, and struggle to keep pace with demand for assessments.
Nervous parents see an as the only way to get any support. Many have to wait years for an assessment, which can involve a maze of paperwork, expert reports and appeals. While parents usually win, the process takes a toll, and leaves educational psychologists tied up in bureaucracy rather than working practically with children and schools. Even if a child gets a plan, there is little guarantee that their school will be able to meet it.
Since the 2014 law came into effect the number of children with an has doubled. It is now more than 500,000 (see chart 2), or one in 20 pupils. As numbers have risen, the average level of per-pupil support has fallen by a third. There is huge variation between schools, with some secondary schools offering good support and others very little. Some parents take matters into their own hands: since 2020 the number of children with who are taught at home has doubled.
Demand has also surged for special schools, outside mainstream provision. The sector has grown by 50% in a decade, to 160,000 children. State schools have been unable to keep up, so the number of children in private special schools has soared, from 10,000 to 30,000. Most of these schools achieve good standards, but at a premium. Westmorland charges annual fees of £85,617 ($114,000) per pupil, which must be paid by local authorities.
In the past private special schools had a niche role, says Luke Sibieta of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a think-tank. In recent years they have become an "overflow". Their growth accounts for nearly a quarter of the rise in overall spending since 2018. Investors like Mubadala Capital are betting the trend will continue.
All this adds up to a gross misallocation of resources. The vast majority of children should be able to thrive in mainstream education, but many don't, which pushes money elsewhere, creating a downward spiral. The trial-by-combat system also penalises poorer families. A paper by the Sutton Trust, a think-tank, finds that two-thirds of middle-class parents spend money on applications, often running into four figures. They are almost twice as likely to secure a special-school place, compared with working-class parents.
A white paper was due this autumn. But on October 22nd the government said it would be delayed, to allow more time for consultation. Ministers could easily face a repeat of the summer rebellion over welfare -- in which they were accused of fixing a hole in the public finances at the expense of the most vulnerable.
The best long-term solution would be to go back to a system in which schools are given funding to meet all of their pupils' needs, and the ability to decide how to use it. Wider education policy should encourage schools to see as a core function. Ofsted could then hold them to account. Some schools already do a good job with limited resources. Making this the norm would require investment, but it would lower costs over time.
The problem with such a plan is that it would involve removing a legal power which, for battle-weary parents, has become a life raft. It could be deeply unpopular. A successful transition is therefore likely to require some element of double-funding (paying for the new, more flexible system while only gradually running down the existing one), to convince parents that provision will indeed improve. Building more special schools would also reduce the need for costly private places.
The trouble with all this, though, is that the government has no money for it. But if it does nothing, spending on special needs will keep rising, and producing the same maddening results. ■