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Fund SEN provision properly instead of making parents fight for every hour

Education ● National by mrs_k_teaches · 🏷️ 1. Concerned Citizen · Fringe · 3 months ago
9

Why does it take 18 months to get an EHCP assessment? Eighteen months. For a child.

I have been a primary school teacher for 14 years. The system isnt a bit broken. It is completely broken. Parents fight through paperwork and tribunal threats just to get a plan and even when they get one the school doesnt have the money to deliver it.

The funding needs to follow the child not the postcode. Every EHCP should come with ring-fenced money the school actually receives.

These are children. They dont have 18 months to wait while adults argue about budgets.

mrs_k_teaches 🏘️ County Councillor Fringe

📖 The Actually Listen Party

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Discussion (8)

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Parent of an autistic child here. Waited 22 months for an EHCP assessment. When it finally came through the school said they didn't have funding to deliver the hours specified. So my child has a legal document saying she's entitled to support, and a school saying they can't actually provide it. The system isn't just broken, it's actively gaslighting parents.
6
I see this from the other side of the desk and I want you to know your child's teacher is probably as frustrated as you are. We get the EHCP, we read it, we know what the child needs, then we're told there's no money for a TA. So we try to deliver specialist support across 30 children with no training and no help and everyone pretends this is fine. It is not fine. None of it is fine.
7
My granddaughter has dyslexia. Her school said they don't "do" dyslexia assessments any more because they can't afford them. She's eight. She thinks she's stupid. She is not stupid. She just needs help in a slightly different way and nobody will pay for it.
5
Please tell her she's not stupid. Please. From a teacher who has worked with hundreds of dyslexic children, many of whom are the most creative and interesting thinkers in the room. The system is failing her. She is not failing.
6
Reform is needed but the funding question is genuine. Local authorities are legally required to deliver what the EHCP specifies, but high-needs funding hasn't kept pace with the number of plans issued. Councils divert money from mainstream school budgets to cover the gap. Demand has grown (which is good, more children identified) but supply hasn't. Ring-fencing's the right idea but needs more total money or it's just shuffling the same insufficient pot around.
4
Exactly why it should be funded centrally. Can't leave it to councils when the need is unevenly distributed and budgets were already cut to the bone. SEN is a national obligation, fund it nationally.
3
My nephew went through this. 14 months of appeals. His mum basically had to become a part-time lawyer just to get him what he was already legally entitled to. It's mad.
3
One of the rare policy areas where there's genuine cross-party consensus among people who actually understand the system, and yet nothing meaningful changes because the cost is large and the political reward is small. The parents going through EHCPs are too exhausted to campaign effectively, and their children are too young to vote. A structural failure of democratic accountability.
3

Mock the policy. Not the person. Community principles →