Councils are increasingly rejecting requests to assess children for special needs such as autism amid the financial crisis in the education system, according to figures seen by the Observer. Long-term underfunding combined with rising demand aggravated by the pandemic has left many councils facing significant deficits on their schools budgets.
Freedom of information data sourced by the website Special Needs Jungle shows that councils in England have responded by increasingly refusing to carry out education, health and care needs assessments (EHCNAs).
These assess whether a child has special needs severe enough to require an education, health and care plan (EHCP), which sets out the provision that child must receive by law.
Figures from 107 English councils show that on average they refused 26.4% of requests for an EHCNA in 2023, up from 21.6% in 2022 – a rise of more than a fifth.
“Councils are refusing EHC needs assessments at an unprecedented rate, but the legal threshold for securing an EHC needs assessment hasn’t changed,” said Tania Tirraoro, co-director of Special Needs Jungle.
“It’s the same threshold, whether the request comes from a school or from a family. And when families appeal to the Send [Special Educational Needs and Disabilities] tribunal, over 90% of them get reversed. Councils are rationing access to vital support, to balance their books and to maintain their grip on a collapsing system.”
The figures show a near 30% average rise in the number of requests for a needs assessment in 2023, with most made by schools and colleges rather than parents. If a child is denied an assessment despite having unmet special needs, there is a risk that their mental health and educational performance could suffer and their needs worsen, and the ultimate cost to the state may grow.
The Department for Education said the analysis was “based upon incomplete and early data, so it would be wrong to draw any conclusions from it”. A spokesperson added: “The vast majority of education, health and care needs assessments and plans are concluded without the need to resort to tribunal hearings.”
In December a high court judge said there were “serious questions” over how Hertfordshire county council responded to EHCNA requests, in a judicial review relating to a child known as W. Hertfordshire had initially refused to carry out a needs assessment for W, before changing its mind shortly before the case went to tribunal. The council then broke the legal time limit to finalise W’s EHCP. A judge ruled that failing unlawful.
“A lot of mainstream education at the moment, the way it is results-focused rather than child-focused, provides a toxic environment for anyone that’s slightly different, slightly neurodiverse,” W’s father told the Observer. “They basically don’t want them in the school – they want to throw them on to the local authority.
“The local authority hasn’t got the money for it and they haven’t invested in any special educational schools, so they have to go to the private sector which is incredibly expensive.
“Which is why they don’t want to do an assessment, because they know what will happen.”
He said W’s school failed to make reasonable adaptations for his daughter, and put pressure on her by contrasting her performance with her sibling’s.
The council refused to conduct a needs assessment after failing to follow the Children and Families Act 2014 – instead of basing its decision on whether W may have special needs, it refused to assess her because it felt her needs could be met in other ways. Her father said this may have made her situation worse.
“I think there were two things about it. One was that we couldn’t offer any hope, because they’d refused to even do an assessment. The second thing is that had they agreed to an assessment, then she would have had access to an educational psychologist. And the educational psychologist would have been able to intervene and prevent self-harm.”
Hertfordshire county council has now completed an assessment and EHCP for child W. A council spokesperson said: “We’ve apologised to the family involved in this judgment and have recognised the wider issues identified by the court, which are not unique to Hertfordshire.
“The judgment relates to a decision made in February 2023, and we have taken steps subsequently to address this situation.”
