Good morning. Across many areas of England today anxious parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send) will be packing their kids back off to school after half-term, waiting to hear what changes the government has in mind for their provision.
Education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, is set to announce sweeping changes that mean children will receive individual support and therapy directly from their schools rather than from heavily indebted local councils. The move comes amid a soaring number of children requiring Send support.
For today’s newsletter I spoke to our political correspondent Alexandra Topping, who has been closely following the planned reforms, about why the number of children with Send requirements has doubled in a decade, why councils say the system is financially unsustainable, and why parents fear that the only legal protections they trust may be weakened. First, the headlines.
Five big stories
Immigration | Reform UK would create an ICE-style agency dedicated to deporting hundreds of thousands of people, as well as terminating the status of those with indefinite leave to remain (ILR), the party will announce.
Mexico | One of the world’s most wanted drug traffickers, the Mexican cartel boss known as “El Mencho”, has been killed by security forces, Mexico’s defence ministry has confirmed. The operation set off a wave of violence, with torched cars and gunmen blocking highways in more than half a dozen states.
Policing | Scotland Yard is using AI tools supplied by the US tech company Palantir to monitor staff behaviour in an attempt to root out failing officers.
Nigel Farage | Nigel Farage has been accused of “performing Maga stunts” after claiming the British government stopped him from travelling to the Chagos Islands on a humanitarian mission.
Baftas | One Battle After Another, Paul Thomas Anderson’s counterculture comedy, has dominated the Baftas, taking home six awards including best film and best director.
In depth: ‘The system does not work at the moment’
On the current trajectory, Alexandra says, one in 10 children in England’s school system could soon have some form of Send requirement. “If you’re talking about one in 10 pupils having additional needs,” she says, “that has to be dealt with within a mainstream system.”
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What are the issues facing schools in England?
“It’s a huge problem that probably needs a huge amount of money to fix,” Alexandra tells me.
Since reforms introduced by Michael Gove in 2014 expanded rights to Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs), the number of children with legally enforceable support has doubled. Costs have spiralled. Parents describe years-long battles to secure help.
“The only thing that everybody agrees on,” Alexandra says, “is that the system does not work at the moment.”
“No one has addressed massive spiralling costs and huge inefficiencies in the system, which have got worse and worse every year. Children are failed by the system, parents are constantly battling with the system, and councils are completely and utterly bankrupt. The government has now been left with something like a £6bn black hole that it somehow has to pay.”
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What is the government trying to achieve?
Many critics have expressed concerns that Labour’s plans to reform Send may be motivated by a need to cut costs amid such increasing need, but Alexandra is convinced that money alone is not driving this reform.
She points to Phillipson’s background and record in championing disadvantaged children, and notes that the education secretary has secured additional funding from the Treasury – something few ministers outside health have managed.
The theory is straightforward: instead of forcing parents into legal battles for individualised plans, make mainstream schools more inclusive from the start. Provide speech and language therapy early. Embed occupational support. Reduce the need for a legal backstop.
But here lies the tension.
Parents who have fought for an EHCP see it as the only enforceable guarantee in the system.
“That is the only part of the system where they can say: you have to be held accountable, because I have this legal right,” Alexandra says. “For people who have struggled to get that legal right, they worry about it disappearing.”
Ministers argue that if children receive support quickly and consistently within schools, the legal mechanism becomes less vital.
As Alexandra puts it: “Is the key thing getting the help that you need, or the legal right to the help that you need?” A working reformed system should see children getting direct assistance in the classroom without a lengthy battle for a piece of paper first.
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Send as the ‘canary in the coalmine’
When I ask what is behind the surge in numbers, Alexandra recalls a conversation with a senior government adviser who described two “canaries in the coalmine”.
“One is the huge increase in school refusal and persistent absenteeism,” she says. “The other is the massive increase in children presenting with special educational needs. Those two things together tell us that something is fundamentally wrong in the education system.” In Alexandra’s view the roster of curriculum changes, particularly those made during Gove’s tenure that were supposed to make our system one of the most competitive in the world, might have a role to play here.
Supporters of Gove’s reforms can point to improved Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings in maths and English since Gove introduced his overhauled – and much-maligned – version of the national curriculum and a rapid drive to turn local-authority run schools into academies.
Michael Rosen has written frequently about how Gove’s rigid approach to the teaching of grammar like “fronted adverbials” stifles creativity, and the changes drove some teachers from the profession. Since the changes, English pupils have become some of the unhappiest in Europe.
“There is no point producing a whole generation of unhappy achievers,” the government adviser added.
The white paper is therefore not just about Send – but about inclusion, belonging and whether school is somewhere children actually want to be.
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Why are parents so distrustful?
Alexandra describes parents being “brutalised” by the EHCP system. Getting an EHCP can take years. Tribunals have surged. Families feel pitted against councils in adversarial battles.
“Parents don’t trust that it can get better,” she says. “And crucially, they are terrified of it getting worse.”
That fear explains the intensity of reaction to any hint that thresholds may be raised or rights diluted.
More than 480,000 children and young people at schools in England have EHCPs and the full package of reforms will be phased in over a decade. Children with a legal right to special needs support will face a review when they move to secondary school, with the first cohort to be affected currently in key stage 1.
From 2030 EHCPs will be reserved for children with the most severe and complex needs, while new individual support plans for children with additional needs, including autistic children and those with an ADHD diagnosis, will still confer additional support and legal rights, with schools expected to make “reasonable adjustments” to accommodate them.
Unlikely to assauge parent’s fears is the battle at a local level to push some costs back on to parents and children. With transport costs for children with special education needs now totalling around £2bn a year, last week the County Councils Network (CCN) called on the government to introduce a national means-testing policy so families above a specified income threshold would be required to make a financial contribution to home-to-school transport.
“But that’s not parents’ fault,” Alexandra says. “They can’t get their kids into special schools near enough to home because there aren’t enough of them”. And campaigners have warned that means testing risks locking disabled children and young people out of education altogether.
Local authorities are also asking for a rethink of the statutory walking limit eligibility criteria, which is two miles for under-eights and three miles for children aged eight and over, and annual assessments to take account of greater independence as children age.
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The bigger economic picture
There is also an economic argument running quietly underneath all this.
If children’s needs are not addressed in school, what happens when they reach working age? If parents are forced to leave the workforce to plug gaps in support, how does that sit with the government’s ambition to boost employment?
“You can’t ignore it any more,” Alexandra says – though she is realistic about the scale of the task.
“Is there enough joined-up thinking? No. Is there enough money? Absolutely not.”
And yet, she insists, the situation is not hopeless.
“I have spoken to a lot of people about this,” she tells me. “And I genuinely think that there are good people, with good ideas, who have done a lot of work behind the scenes before this white paper comes out.” No doubt, she adds, they are going to take “an absolute battering” when it does come out, from parts of the media and opposition politicians. “But I don’t think the ideas behind the reforms are wrong.”
A generation of children are depending on that.
What else we’ve been reading
I am far too old to be considered a fan of Charli xcx (pictured above), but am fascinated by her as a cultural force. Jenna Mahale examines her contributions on the big screen with multiple movie projects on the go. Martin
We’re coming up to the fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but this superb piece of reporting by Shaun Walker looks at the warnings ignored and the intelligence operation that might have been able to stop it. Toby Moses, head of newsletters
“How do you rebut a vibe?” is a sentence that stands out in this piece by Jonathan Liew looking in depth at Matt Goodwin, who is seeking to become Reform UK’s next MP. Martin
Angelique Chrisafis’s interview with Gisèle Pelicot is a must read, as she talks about surviving the trial and her new relationship: “We met and fell in love. We couldn’t have foreseen that. So you see, hope is allowed.” Toby
We all know the bond between owners and their animals can feel all-consuming, but should you clone your pet to keep them around for ever? Laura Pitcher investigates the ethics – and the eye-watering price. Martin
Sport
Football | Arsenal restored their five-point advantage at the top of the Premier League with a 4-1 victory at local rivals Tottenham, Viktor Gyökeres and Eberechi Eze both with a brace. Eze, pictured above, has scored five of his six league goals this season against Spurs. Elsewhere, Liverpool secured a late 1-0 win at Nottingham Forest, with Alexis Mac Allister scoring a 97th-minute winner.
Winter Olympics | The US defeated Canada 2-1 in the gold medal final to earn the nation’s third men’s title at the games and its first since the “Miracle on Ice” in 1980. Meanwhile, Team GB have hailed a “historic” Winter Olympics after Britain’s greatest performance in the 102 years of the Games left them 15th in the medal table.
Cricket | England stumbled to a win over Sri Lanka in their opening men’s T20 World Cup Super 8 match, as the hosts slumped to 95 all out having been set a meagre run chase of 147.
The front pages
The Guardian leads with “Ministers reveal £4bn package to support pupils with special needs”. The Financial Times reveals “Tehran in secret deal with Kremlin for €500mn of advanced missile kit”.
The i has “No 10 fast-tracked security vetting for Mandelson despite known links to Epstein”. The Telegraph reports “Epstein’s secret files hidden across US”, while the Times leads with “Evidence of Epstein’s UK flights destroyed”. The Mail has “William says he’s ‘not in calm state’ amid Andrew arrest drama”. The Sun follows the same story with “Wills – I’m not in a calm state”, while the Mirror has “William: I need to calm down...”.
Today in Focus
Will we ever read books again?
Author and academic Katherine Rundell explores the precipitous decline in reading books for pleasure, and what can be done to reverse it.
Cartoon of the day | Tom Gauld
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
In Barcelona, a skyline that has been inching upwards since the 19th century has finally found its crown. The highest point of the Sagrada Família – a gleaming cross atop its central spire – has been set in place, bringing Antoni Gaudí’s unfinished masterpiece to its intended height at last, 172.5m.
For nearly a century and a half, stonemasons, architects and engineers have taken up the work, each generation adding its own chapter to a project that has outlived wars, dictatorships and pandemics. What was once an audacious dream sketched out in the 1880s now stands complete in silhouette: a testament to patience, craft and collective belief.
The basilica is not quite finished – but the moment feels quietly triumphant. In a world impatient for results, Barcelona offers a different lesson: that some of the most beautiful things take time, and that perseverance, passed from hand to hand, can shape our horizons.
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Bored at work?
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