Debate on SEND Provision and Reform: We’re Losing Sight of the Basics.
I am a parent of a child with additional needs. I am also the co‑founder of My Penelope, a digital tool built to help parents navigate the SEND system, keep track of provision, and avoid falling through the cracks.
I live in both worlds every day: the emotional reality of parenting a child with significant needs, and the systemic reality of trying to make a failing SEND system work.
That is why I am deeply concerned by the direction of travel in the current SEND reform proposals.
Monday’s Parliamentary debate on SEND Provision and Reform did little to reassure me. It was also deeply disappointing to see that our own MP, Leigh Ingham, did not speak—particularly given how vocal she has been about wanting to support SEND families in our constituency.
This concern is not because reform isn’t needed—it clearly is.
It is because too much of the debate now feels as though we are arguing over whether children should have a basic right to education, rather than how we collectively deliver
that right inclusively and well.
The Right to Appeal in the SEND System.
For many families, the right to appeal is not about being litigious or difficult.It is about having a safety net.
Living the reality of EHCP appeals.
We are living this reality now. We had to appeal the local authority’s decision simply to agree to assess our child for an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP). We are now back again, challenging the plan that has been written.
This is for a child diagnosed with a complex medical profile. A child with part of her brain missing.
And still, we fight on.
Appeals exist because decisions are often wrong—anyone living and breathing this system knows that. Data consistently shows that parents and carers win the vast majority of EHCP appeals, with success rates cited at over 95–99%. That is not because families are unreasonable; it is because the system is failing to get it right first time.
Resources are uneven. Children do not fit neatly into frameworks.
Yet the current proposals point towards a watered‑down appeal mechanism, and in some cases none at all.
When parents lose the ability to challenge decisions meaningfully, they are left with no independent mechanism to protect their child’s needs. This is not ethical—and it is not legal.
Checks and balances matter
As a lawyer, I was taught from day one that our constitutional balance relies on three arms of the state: the executive, the judiciary, and the monarchy. Each exists to temper the other.
Where is that balance now?
To me, this feels uncomfortably like an executive seeking to operate without meaningful judicial oversight.
Helen Hayes MP put it plainly during the debate:
“A system that relies on parents having to battle every step of the way and having to go to tribunals to seek redress is an exclusionary and inequitable system.”
Absolutely. But that does not mean the solution is to remove or weaken the right to appeal. The solution is to fix what is broken within the current system.
The fault lies squarely with government and local authorities. Under‑trained staff, staff shortages, and chronic underfunding have created a system that relies on the appeals process as a pressure valve—to buy time, ration resources, and wear parents down until they accept less than their children need.
We are not talking about children with SEND getting “more” than others.We are talking about levelling the playing field.
Why are children who already have more to cope with in life consistently denied the basic support that would allow them to flourish alongside their peers?
Penny already starts every day facing battles others do not: limited physical function, seizures, dysregulation, profound fatigue—and far more besides. Why should she then be denied the support that would allow her to focus on learning?
Because that is what the current system does.And the proposed reforms threaten to make this worse.
Appeals are often framed as a burden on the system. In reality, they are a symptom, not a cause, of a system that fails to listen to families early enough. Removing or weakening appeal rights does not build trust—it creates fear, silence, and disengagement.
So where is the certainty on this, Bridget?
As Gregory Stafford MP warned Parliament:
“If we remove [the right to appeal], families will lose their ultimate protection.”
That is not abstract. It is our lived reality.
Schools as Judge, Jury, and Executioner
Schools already carry an enormous burden.
As a school governor, I see daily the pressure on teachers to drive continuous improvement in teaching and learning—while more and more expectations are layered onto them outside the classroom.
The plate does not grow just because more is added to it. Eventually, it cracks.
Our education system is already cracking.
Unrealistic expectations under SEND reform
Under the proposed reforms, schools are being asked to:
identify need
define appropriate support
determine whether a need is “complex enough”
and manage delivery
All under intense funding pressure.All without medical expertise.And often without access to multidisciplinary insight.
This places schools in the position of judge, jury, and executioner.
Local authorities do not have medical expertise either, but at least currently they can commission assessments and direct specialist input. Under the proposed system, how exactly is that gap meant to be filled?
Governing bodies—largely volunteers—will increasingly be drawn into decisions far beyond their expertise. This pressure risks undermining school leadership and recruitment at exactly the moment stability is needed most.
That is not fair on educators.And it is not fair on children.
Schools should be partners in inclusion, not gatekeepers to support.
When accountability is blurred and independent checks are removed, tension grows—between parents and schools, between inclusion and capacity, between professional judgement and financial reality.
This is not how trust is built.
“Complex Medical Needs”: A Dangerous Lack of Definition
One of the most troubling elements of the SEND reform proposals is the lack of a clear definition of complex medical need.
Who defines it?
What thresholds apply?
What happens to children whose needs do not fit neatly into one category?
Many children with neurodevelopmental conditions, rare diseases, or fluctuating medical needs already exist in grey areas.
Penny is one of them.
She has a complex medical profile but, on the surface, looks fine—like a swan gliding smoothly across the water. What is unseen is the relentless effort beneath. Without stability built around her—without systems that catch her when she falls—she risks being lost by a system that too often fails disabled children.
Without clear, nationally consistent definitions:
support becomes subjective
provision becomes postcode‑dependent
and families are forced to argue again and again—only to hit a wall
Without an independent right to appeal, there is no room for challenge at all.
A child’s access to support should never depend on how articulately a parent can evidence complexity.
Are We Really Arguing About the Right to Education?
Perhaps the most painful question raised by this debate is this:
Do all children still have an unquestioned right to an education that meets their needs?
Too often, SEND discussions are framed around sustainability, affordability, and cost. These are real issues—but they must never eclipse the principle of inclusion.
When we divide children into categories of “manageable” and “too complex”, or families into “reasonable” and “difficult”, we recreate the very exclusions these reforms claim to solve.
Inclusion is not about forcing children to contort themselves to fit systems. It is about designing systems that flex around children.
I cannot fathom why, in 2025, we are still debating what real inclusion looks like for disabled people—not buzzwords, but life.
The right to travel.
The right to accessible spaces.
The right to participate.
And for our children—most fundamental of all—the right to an education.
As Nelson Mandela said in 2007:
“It is not beyond our power to create a world in which all children have access to good education.”
Helen Hayes MP captured the urgency of this during the debate:
“No child should feel that there is no place for them in our education system, that their needs are not understood or, even worse… that they are the problem.”
Why We Built My Penelope.
We did not build My Penelope to replace human care.
We built it because parents are overwhelmed, information is fragmented, decisions are opaque, and families like ours are exhausted by constant repetition and conflict.
What we see time and again is not parents asking for “more”, but parents asking for clarity, consistency, and dignity.
SEND reform should:
reduce conflict, not entrench it
empower schools, not isolate them
support families, not ask them to surrender safeguards in exchange for vague assurances
A Final Thought.
Reform is necessary.But how we reform matters just as much as what we reform.
If we lose:
the right to challenge
clear definitions of need
shared accountability
and a genuine commitment to inclusion
then we are not fixing the SEND system.
We are simply shifting the burden—onto schools, onto families, and ultimately onto children who deserve better.
We should not be arguing about whether children have a right to education.
We should be working together to honour that right—openly, fairly, and inclusively.
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