SEND Review – no definitive timescale for publication    

The eagerly awaited SEND Review, delayed due to COVID, would appear to be subject to further delays. Susan Acland-Hood, the Permanent Secretary for the Department for Education, was giving evidence to the Public Accounts Select Committee reviewing school funding when she was drawn on the SEND Review. She had previously stated that the review would be published by the end of June 2021 and the chair asked for an update. The Permanent Secretary stated that, “We can see the system into which the SEND review needs to land changing quite fundamentally as a result of the Pandemic and we wanted to make sure that there was a risk that it wasn’t going to be as effective as we wanted it to be”.

When asked what the new timeframe was, the Permanent Secretary said, “We are going to do it as soon as we can”. Meg Hillier MO, chair of the committee, stated that “SEN is vital but it shouldn’t be scraped out of other budgets where there is also great needs”.

There was discussion of the increase in High Needs Funding and was not waiting for the SEND Review. However, the current National Funding Formula consultation on page 36 states: ‘The SEND Review is considering improvements to make sure that the SEND system is consistent, high quality, and integrated across education, health and care, and to make it financially sustainable for the future. As such, the recommendations of the SEND Review will have important implications for how support for pupils with SEND is delivered and funded, including in mainstream schools.’

Therefore, will the delay in the publication of the SEND Review have implications for the funding consultation and the implementation of a new funding formula for pupils with SEND?