SEN vs The State - How Governments Have Let Down Disabled Pupils

"Our school is not the right environment for your son. We cannot support him in the way he needs”

This was the news awaiting one family with an autistic son who spoke out.  

Despite being rated “outstanding” by Ofsted in an inspection just 1 month prior to this meeting, this state secondary school was unable to accommodate the needs of a child who has a learning disability affecting over 180,000 students in England. With 73% of autistic students attending state schools, does this mean that the state education system in England is systematically failing 133,000 children every single year?

The question of SEN education has always been fraught with complications for parents, inconsistencies for pupils and neglect from successive governments, whose political agendas rather than knowledge of the sector have shaped funding, investment and focus. From Tony Blair’s calls for an expansion in the number of specialist schools available in each county and devolution of education legislation to the constituent UK nations, to David Cameron’s education secretary Michael Gove encouraging the mainstream education of SEN pupils whilst simultaneously cutting education spending year-on-year. Pupils and parents have been ignored as a fundamental issue has become politically loaded and used as an example of social ideology. 

These decisions have consequences. 

In 2022–23, almost half (45%) of all appeals concerning Educational Health and Care Plans were related to autistic children and young people, despite autistic pupils accounting for 32% of pupils with an EHCP. This highlights the difficulties autistic pupils can face in accessing the additional support they need. Significantly, an EHCP can also exempt parents of eligible children from Labour’s 20% VAT charge on private school fees.

And, for some families without an EHCP, paying for a private education was “the only viable way to continue education safely and successfully”. 

Despite average private school fees increasing by 22.6% between 2024 and 2025, the number of SEN pupils without an EHCP attending independent schools in the UK increased by roughly 1% across the time period. This is 0.4% higher than the increase seen across state schools, and indicative of the increase in the number of families with autistic children who “made the difficult decision to completely change our lifestyle in order to fund private education”. 

Speaking anonymously, the family admitted that “the recent addition of VAT to private school fees has placed us under enormous financial pressure. Because our son does not have an EHCP, his school fees are not exempt from VAT. As a result, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to afford for him to continue into sixth form. Funds that had been saved for his university education have already been used to support his schooling”.

“We are not sending our child to a private school because we can afford to — we are doing it because we have no alternative”. 

This is a fate shared by many families whose children, despite not receiving an EHCP, would struggle in a mainstream school and therefore view private school as the last place in which their kids can “achieve their full potential”. 

At a time when the incoming Andy Burnham administration is driving to reduce the number of young people Not in Education Employment or Training by providing easier access to training programmes, it is important to note that 14% of NEET young people have been diagnosed with autism, showing that the rot has already begun to set in as an inherent failure to provide adequate education provisions for SEN students is translating into a demographic that is underqualified, marginalised and disenfranchised. 

However, central to the government’s plan to increase defence spending has been the introduction of a welfare-cutting policy that would provide further hurdles to a EHCP application, making it even harder for SEN pupils to achieve their full potential, and widening the gap between those who drown in a state school unfit to support their needs and those who are able to afford an independent school education. 

Surely, Labour voters must ask, this is contrary to the party’s very core message of providing a hand up to those who need it most, levelling the playing field and creating environments in which the wealth of parents holds no bearing on the future of their kids?

“How can the system allow children with Special Educational Needs to fall through the gaps in this way? How can they be denied the support they need to reach their full potential?”

If the Prime Minister is serious about doing politics differently, these are the questions he must answer. 

“The system is broken”.