Local Government Association response to the Department for Education’s SEND reform national conversation

The Local Government Association (LGA) is the national voice of local government. We work with councils to support, promote and improve local government.

We are a politically-led, cross party organisation which works on behalf of councils to ensure local government has a strong, credible voice with national government. We aim to influence and set the political agenda on the issues that matter to councils, so they are able to deliver local solutions to national problems. The LGA covers every part of England and Wales, supporting local government as the most efficient and accountable part of the public sector.

The SEND system is not meeting need

The Public Accounts Committee reported in January 2025 year that ‘The SEN system is inconsistent, inequitable and not delivering in line with expectations, which inevitably undermines parents’ confidence in it.’, and that ‘the SEN system is unaffordable, placing a significant strain on local authorities’ finances’. The statistics support the Committee’s findings:

Early Identifying needs early 

How can we notice when a child or young person needs extra help as early as possible and make sure support starts quickly - even without a diagnosis? 

The LGA commissioned independent report ‘rising needs in the early years’ sets out how important it is to get it right for children with additional needs at the earliest point. As noted above, there are rising numbers of EHCPs being issued to children aged 4 and 5. The early years system is prime to be an inclusive and supportive environment for young children and to support parents throughout this phase, however, practitioners are needing to increase their support for children with little or no language, support for children struggling with social interactions. There are systemic concerns that are contributing to this rise, such as poverty, increasing rates of identified neurodivergence and the lasting effects of the pandemic on children. 

Early years settings should be placed at the heart of a wider, joined-up system of additional support. There should be greater expectations on local partners to work together to deliver an integrated approach to identifying need and delivering additional support to settings and families. The whole system needs to wraparound and provide support to children with additional needs and their families, as well as play a key role in preventing the escalation of needs. Family Hubs and children’s centres provide a good opportunity for this, working with multidisciplinary services and improved communication across health visitors, family support workers and early years practitioners.

Providing timely support for children and young people who need extra support is vital to the success of reforms to the SEND and education systems. For this to happen staff in all education settings, whether for early years, schools or colleges, need to have the skills and confidence to identify those individual children and young people, have the training to provide help themselves or be able to access specialist support quickly and effectively. Where specialist support is needed there needs to be sufficient capacity to meet that need quickly and effectively.  Crucially, parent-carers need to have confidence that their children’s needs can be met quickly and effectively, whether with or without a diagnosis.

Supporting needs quickly 

What would help nurseries, schools, and colleges give the right support straight away when they see a child or young person struggling? 

A more inclusive offer in mainstream education cannot depend on simply asking teachers and support staff, who too often feel overwhelmed and disempowered by the rising number of pupils with additional needs and the complexity of their needs, to do more. 

A reformed funding system in the early years for supporting special educational needs and disabilities is needed. Early years funding reform is required to ensure a more proactive approach to enabling providers to support children with SEND. This cannot be done within the existing funding pot, therefore the additional funding that has been announced in the Best Start in Life strategy is welcomed.

Funding reform should consider de-linking Disability Access Fund from Disability Living Allowance. Other reform could consider stopping the individualised approach to funding per child (although recognising this may at times be required for specific children), and enable local flexibility to support approaches such as upfront lump sums, or working with specific clusters of settings. This enables providers to have greater clarity on the expected funding amounts and have long term clarity over expected funding, enabling consistency in provision for children with SEND.

There are positive examples of local authorities proactively building the capacity of providers and planning provision to enable them to better support children with additional needs in their early years settings. This includes providing free training to early years settings and working with area-based SENCOs or support services, and convening networks of early years providers. Local authorities should be properly invested in to build this capacity and support and lead a local system to respond to children’s and parents needs. 

As part of the training and investment into the early years workforce, there would be a strong focus on child development and inclusive practices as part of a new approach to workforce development. The LGA has long called for a more streamlined approach to the early years workforce training and qualifications, as well as a concerted government effort into recruitment and retention of providers. 

Investment and clarity 

Central to the ambition of creating a more inclusive mainstream school environment, as set out in the LGA/CCN commissioned independent report, Towards an effective and financially sustainable approach to SEND in England, is a very significant ramping up of the capacity within mainstream schools to support children and young people with additional needs. Our research suggests this should have four main elements: 

• Creating easy and quick access to multi­disciplinary specialists to work directly with children and young people and upskill frontline practitioners

One of the key drivers for parents and carers in seeking an EHCP for their child is that accessing the right kind of therapeutic support – be that Speech and Language Therapy (SALT), mental health support or occupational therapy – can be very difficult without one. Waiting lists for many of these services are long and access to services is inconsistent between different parts of the country. At the same time, research fieldwork highlighted that teachers often feel exposed and unsupported – conscious of the specialist therapeutic input that would help children and young people but unable to provide it to the level and quality they would wish.

Every mainstream school must have access to a team of multi-disciplinary specialists who would be physically present, on site, for a specified number of days a week. The core team could comprise, for example, some or all of SALTs, mental health practitioners, autism specialist teachers, Educational Psychologists, family support workers and youth workers. This could be complimented by schools being able to draw on a wider array of practitioners beyond the core team on a less frequent basis, such as occupational therapists, physical therapists, and specialist teachers for children and young people with vision or hearing impairments (this list is provided to be illustrative, not prescriptive). The exact make-up of the teams is something that would be worked through in local areas, based on the needs of the children and young people and the resource that may already be available within schools or commissioned services. The amount of time each school is allocated from the core team would also need to be modelled locally and may differ from school to school. The key point, however, is that access to these practitioners would be regular, scheduled and in person, and schools would be able to shape what the multi-disciplinary team focused their time on. 

• Reforming teacher training

Working with children with additional needs should form a much more significant element of initial teacher training, a required part of ongoing professional development for all teachers, and a core dimension of leadership development programmes. Practitioners who participated in the research highlighted that SEND is still a very small component of initial teacher training and after that point there is no requirement for teachers to come back to SEND as a topic through their ongoing professional development unless they choose to do so. 

Ongoing professional development in working with children with additional needs should be a golden thread that runs through every teacher’s career from start to finish, with mandatory training every year, for every teacher, on supporting children and young people with additional needs. This might, in particular, focus initially on speech and language, Social, Emotional Mental Health and supporting neurodiverse children, as these are the needs that the data suggest are growing most rapidly. Our ambition should be that every teacher in every classroom in the country should be able to count themselves as expert in working with children with additional needs, as they are in working with every other child.

• Building on collaborative networks between schools

We support networks of schools within a locality – be they academy trusts, teaching school hubs, small geographically based clusters, or formal local education partnerships – as playing a key role in sharing expertise and delivering the professional development requirement through peer-led learning. There is now a widespread expectation and understanding that school leaders, as system leaders, will drive improvement in learning more generally. If inclusion is to be placed at the heart of mainstream education, then it also needs to be written through the core dialogue and collaboration around school improvement. This could be stimulated through the Department for Education setting clearer expectations of academy trusts in relation to their role in driving system improvement in working with children with additional needs; directly commissioning teaching school hubs to prioritise learning in this area; and tasking local SEND partnerships with driving place-based approaches to building capacity through collaboration.

• Reforming and creating maximum flexibility for funding for additional needs in mainstream settings. 

To meet pupils’ additional needs effectively, mainstream settings require both more funding and greater flexibility in how that funding is deployed. Our research proposes recommendation the creation of a model of additional needs funding that directs a higher proportion of available funding to mainstream schools in order to meet the large majority of needs. This would increase the overall envelope of funding to be used to support children and young people in a mainstream environment. 

This funding should be cohort-based, to enable a school to meet the needs of all its learners with additional needs without the funding being hypothecated for individual children. Funding for pupils with additional needs would form a core and identified part of a mainstream school’s budget, and schools would be required to report annually to governors on how the money has been spent on supporting pupils with additional needs. This statement would be available to parents and could also form part of the evidence taken into account by Ofsted as part of an inspection, if desired. 

In this system, schools will have much greater flexibility in how they use their SEND funding and how they use the adults in their school to support SEND, as long as they meet at least the expected levels of support set out in national expectations. We would expect to see a move towards more creative ways of using funding and staffing capacity, such as enabling smaller group learning environments for children with similar needs, developing nurture units or sensory provision or even allowing for some smaller class sizes as a result. 

With the additional funding available and greater flexibility in how it is deployed, we would hope to see schools creating their own in-school “inclusion teams”. These could be led by SENCOs, and would include the designated safeguarding lead, pastoral leads, attendance leads and family liaison workers. In smaller schools, where it would not be feasible to have dedicated members of staff for these roles, we envisage that the SENCO, senior leaders and teaching staff would all draw on the support and guidance of the multi-disciplinary teams to ensure that the skills to work effectively with children and young people with additional needs are distributed across the school, rather than invested in one person. 

Making support high quality everywhere 

• How should we record and review the help a child or young person receives, so support can be adjusted quickly as their needs change?

The LGA/CCN commissioned independent report proposes a Learner Record for all children and young people on the additional needs register (another recommendation made in that report) that would set out what they can do and the support they need. This would also be the basis for enhanced transition planning. 

The Learner Record would set out what individual children and young people can do, the support they need, and the adaptations that should be put in place to enable them to thrive. It would also set out their level of need, according to nationally agreed descriptions. The Learner Record would stay with them throughout their education career and would be updated every term as part of ongoing continual assessment. 

The Learner Record would also form the basis for enhanced transition planning, including earlier sharing of data and information, settling-in periods and professional dialogue, which would be a legal entitlement for all children and young people on the additional needs register. This would be overseen by the Local Inclusion Partnership, and settings, schools and colleges would have a duty to cooperate in executing the contents of the Learner Record. 

Local

Making local schools, early years settings and colleges more inclusive 

• What changes to classrooms, buildings or staff skills would help more children and young people with SEND learn in their local school, college or EY setting? 

Increasing levels of mainstream inclusion for all children and young people of all ages with SEND must be central to the Government’s proposals to reform the education system. This cannot be achieved by simply telling settings to be more inclusive, the mainstream education system must be configured in a far more inclusive way. This must include the following measures:

• Build capacity for inclusion in early years settings, mainstream schools, settings and colleges through access to teams of multi-disciplinary specialists.
• Reform the training and development of teachers and early years practitioners, develop new specialist teacher roles in the early years and harness the power of collaboration to drive inclusion.
• Reform funding for mainstream schools and colleges so that a much higher proportion of funding for additional needs comes through core budgets to enable maximum flexibility in how it is used, and reform early years funding for additional needs so that it is sufficient and easy to access.
• Create an enabling environment for inclusion by reforming curriculum, assessment and qualifications, performance reporting and accountability, so that there is a wider range of curriculum pathways for children and young people with additional needs to follow, that their achievements in those pathways “count” towards measures of performance, and that the work of highly inclusive settings, schools and colleges is recognised in performance reporting and inspection.
• Place inclusion at the heart of design standards for educational buildings, particularly ensuring that the needs of neurodiverse children and young people are better reflected in building design and refurbishment.
• Use enhanced council-commissioning powers to ensure parents and carers of children in the early years with additional needs are able to access high-quality early education locally and with ease, and provide a local outreach service to parents and carers as their child’s first educators.

Building and spreading expertise 

• What do you think about ideas like SEND hubs or Centres of Excellence? 

At a national level we would like to explore the creation of an independent body that could set and implement a long-term agenda for inclusive education. There is no independent body responsible for reviewing emerging needs, synthesising evidence of best practice, and setting out national expectations of what good practice should look like. 

While there are currently bodies like the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and programmes like What Works in SEND, there could be a need for a broader and more strategic independent body. The National Institute would have important functions in overseeing the system of inclusive education, childhood development and early adulthood, analysing trends, periodically refining expectations of mainstream and specialist education, informing workforce planning, shaping workforce development and CPD, and resolving disputes about practice.

Working together 

• How can the specialist and mainstream sector (early years settings, schools, colleges) work together to support children and young people so they can be educated close to home?

While councils want to see an education system in which the needs of many more children can be met in mainstream settings without the need for a statutory plan, there will always be some children and young people with complex needs who need to be educated in specialist settings. In a reformed SEND system we are calling for special schools to have a clearer outreach role, accompanied by a more porous boundary between mainstream and special settings. 

Our research envisages a system in which special schools could play a broader, more expansive role within a future education system. There is considerable expertise in the special sector that could be used more systematically to support the wider education system. This could allow teachers and support staff from special schools to work for some of their time directly supporting children and young people in mainstream schools or providing training and outreach to mainstream staff. It could allow for time-limited placements in special schools for some young people, to develop particular skills or ways of learning, before moving back into a mainstream school. 

This would require a different way of funding special schools. One option to consider would be funding special schools for a maximum number of pupils – a cohort – according to a national tariff based on levels and complexity of need, removing the placement and top-up model. This would provide schools with predictability over core budgets and the flexibility to plan in advance. 

In a more inclusive system with more personalised curricula options, strategic use of high-quality, complementary Alternative Provision (AP) will be important alongside mainstream and special school provision. This could build on the three-tier model for AP set out in the SEND and AP improvement plan, which is centred around targeted support in mainstream schools, time-limited placements and transitional placements. In many ways, the new role that we envisage for special schools is analogous to this three-tier model for AP settings. 

Reducing special school places should not be seen as an end in itself, but instead to increase the capacity and the range of needs met in mainstream schools. A new role for special schools is a corollary of that ambition.

We need to do more to understand and explore the role of specialist provision in the early years. Some local areas have specialist assessment centres, some where children remain on the role of a mainstream provider and others where children move onto the roll of the centre. Some special schools offer places for children in the early years. Some national organisations run provision that is designed to support families and enable children to continue their education in mainstream settings. It is likely that there is no single model that will be right for every context and every child. As a first step, further work should be undertaken to map existing models to understand the role(s) specialist early years provision plays now and what role it should play in the future.

Fair

Support in every school and education setting 

• What support should all nurseries, schools and colleges give to children and young people with SEND as standard, so families do not have to ask or argue to receive it? 

Research commissioned by the LGA has found that a crucial characteristic of a future system is that access to support should not be dependent on having a statutory plan. The hollowing out of non-statutory SEN Support (and the reduction in wider support services for has made it seem imperative to secure an EHCP) to get access to any support and to ensure some degree of accountability for its delivery. It is vital that a future system provides a much broader “core” offer of support for all children and young people who need it, which does not depend on them having a statutory plan. For such a system to work, there would need to be significant initial investment in building the capacity of settings and services to deliver this “core offer”. Furthermore, that offer of support would need to have “teeth” in the sense of effective accountability and routes of redress for families. 

As mentioned elsewhere, a reformed system must guarantee that every early years setting, school and college would have regular access to a range of expert support – which could include, for example, a speech and language therapist, educational psychologist, mental health practitioner, occupational therapist and specialist teacher – to work with groups of students, support in carrying out assessments, model and coach practice, and upskill staff. This offer would not be dependent on individual children having – or needing – a statutory plan, but instead would enable education settings, targeted services and families to work together to identify needs and put in place additional support early. 

Working with parents and young people 

• What will support parents, children and young people to feel listened to, informed, and involved in shaping the support they or their child receives – especially families in difficult situations, like those facing poverty?

The voices and experiences of children and young people with SEND, as well as parent-carers must be at the centre of a reformed SEND system. Children and young people must feel valued, capable and that they belong in education and in their communities, and able to pursue their aspirations (and not to be made to feel that they do not fit, are not understood, and have to seek special accommodations).

Parents and carers should feel that their views and preferences are heard and valued (rather than feeling ignored), that they are supported by the system (rather than feeling that they have to battle it because they have a child with SEND), that education and wider services understand their children and are helping them to thrive. 

A system that is built on an understanding of children and young people as they are (including their additional needs), recognising that children and young people learn in different ways and at different times, and that settings and services exist for the benefit of individuals and should respond to their needs, rather than assuming children and young people must conform to in order to be included; in which education settings and wider children’s and family services work together and are enabled to be flexible and person-centred so as to identify and address needs early, and to enable children and young people (including those who need additional support) to thrive in childhood and to pursue their aspirations;  that maintains ambition and high expectations for all children and young people, and fosters a broader and more holistic view of how children and young people thrive and achieve; that encourages children and young people to feel valued and capable; and that prepares young people for adult life in their communities alongside their peers. 

Ending the postcode lottery 

• How can we make sure children and young people get the same high‑quality support wherever they live?

The Government must set out their clear expectations of how a reformed system will ensure all children and young people get the same high-quality support wherever they live. This should include setting out an inspiring vision for how our education, health, care and wider services will enable children and young people with additional needs to thrive in their education and as they move into adulthood, in which additional needs/SEND are not treated as an “add-on”, but instead are central to how we plan education, children’s and family services; and Have a clear set of ambitions for how children and young people with additional needs will be supported, to which all policies relating to education, childhood development and preparation for adulthood are linked and calibrated. 

Our research identified a broad consensus that any future approach to education for children and young people with additional needs should be built on two broad and connected principles: inclusion in education and preparation for adult life in inclusive communities. A key principle of reform should be to give children and young people the chance to attend their local education setting, in their local community, with their peers. This should be accompanied by a move away from the idea of a separate “system” for children and young people with SEND, and towards a broader social model of additional needs. 

As proposed in our research, the creation of National Framework for inclusive education would act as the foundation for a more consistent approach to inclusive education. The National Framework would provide a common rubric for talking about types and severity of needs. This is a prerequisite of providing national clarity on the additional needs that should be expected to be met in mainstream and specialist education settings. In turn, this clarity on the needs to be met within – as well as the respective roles of – mainstream and specialist education settings is a necessary underpinning of policies relating to curriculum, assessment and qualifications, workforce, professional development, commissioning of services, performance and accountability, preparation for adulthood, funding, and buildings.

There are already national categories for talking about broad types of needs – cognition and learning, communication and interaction, SEMH, and physical and/or sensory needs are set out in the Code of Practice, and commonly used by practitioners. 

While there are challenges in the interpretation and practical application of these broad areas of need – specifically in what constitutes SEMH and in how data is collected about primary/combinations of needs – these are not insurmountable. In a more inclusive system of education, childhood development and preparation for adulthood, applying specific labels to a child or young person’s needs would matter less than building an understanding of and responding to an individual child or young person’s needs. In this way, the National Framework would encompass a broad range of additional needs that affect how children and young people access learning in their education. 

We are particularly concerned about some children not getting access to early education and childcare entitlements due to their special educational needs and disabilities as settings feel they are unable to support them. This impacts on children’s outcomes and their parents/carers ability to work. In our report, just over a third (38%) of providers reported having reduced the hours that children who needed additional support could attend. A quarter (24%) reported having to turn away children because the provider did not think they could meet their needs. Parents and carers described how this experience of being turned away could create a feeling that their child did not fit in anywhere, while at the same time reducing parents’ confidence to take their child to other groups or activities

Effective

Training teachers and the education workforce 

• Do you think mandatory continuing professional development (CPD) would help achieve high-quality support for children and young people? What CPD topics should it cover for different stages of education?

As mentioned previously, we believe that ongoing professional development in working with children with additional needs should be a golden thread that runs through every teacher’s career from start to finish, with mandatory training every year, for every teacher, on supporting children and young people with additional needs. This might, in particular, focus initially on speech and language, Social, Emotional Mental Health and supporting neurodiverse children, as these are the needs that the data suggest are growing most rapidly. Our ambition should be that every teacher in every classroom in the country should be able to count themselves as expert in working with children with additional needs, as they are in working with every other child.

Supporting SENCOs

• What changes do you think are required to support and enhance the role of SENCOs (or their equivalents) in education settings? 

In a reformed education system we believe that there should be sufficient experienced staff, with the right skills to deliver the support that children and young people with additional needs require across all phases. The workforce for supporting children and young people with additional needs should be stable, motivated, valued and enabled to develop professionally throughout their careers; and the time and skills of this workforce should be used where it is needed most – in direct work with children and young people and in supporting and training other frontline practitioners who interact daily with children and young people. 

• What evidence should early years, schools and colleges look at to decide the best way to support a child or young person with SEND?

Using evidence must be seen in the context of a shared definition of what ‘good’ looks like in supporting children and young people with SEND, as well as an agreed definition of inclusion. As mentioned previously, the LGA’s independent research proposes the creation of a national vision, based on enabling inclusion and preparation for adulthood; these two pillars should be central to overarching definition of a ‘good’ system. Similarly there are a number of definitions of inclusion that could be used, for example that developed by The Difference: ‘Inclusion is all staff supporting the learning, wellbeing and safety needs of all children, so that they belong, achieve and thrive.’

The Government, via the What Works in SEND centre, has a key role to play in identifying evidence of effective practice, working with partners in local government, education, health, parent-carers and children and young people with SEND themselves. 

Shared

Services working together 

• What does good teamwork between local services (like health, education, and councils) look like, and what gets in the way of this?

As mentioned above, the Government, via the What Works in SEND centre, has a key role to play in identifying evidence of effective practice, working with partners in local government, education, health, parent-carers and children and young people with SEND themselves. This should be supplemented by the findings of Area SEND inspections undertaken by Ofsted and the CQC.

Supporting transitions 

• How can nurseries, schools, colleges, and employers work together to support children as they move through different stages of education, and what would a successful model for this look like?

As discussed earlier in our response, the LGA/CCN commissioned independent report proposes a Learner Record for all children and young people on the additional needs register (another recommendation made in that report) that would set out what they can do and the support they need. This would also be the basis for enhanced transition planning.

The Learner Record would set out what individual children and young people can do, the support they need, and the adaptations that should be put in place to enable them to thrive. It would also set out their level of need, according to nationally agreed descriptions. The Learner Record would stay with them throughout their education career and would be updated every term as part of ongoing continual assessment. 

The Learner Record would also form the basis for enhanced transition planning, including earlier sharing of data and information, settling-in periods and professional dialogue, which would be a legal entitlement for all children and young people on the additional needs register. This would be overseen by the Local Inclusion Partnership, and settings, schools and colleges would have a duty to cooperate in executing the contents of the Learner Record. 

Beyond that, we believe there needs to be significant reforms around preparation for adulthood. This should include:

• The age at which young people move from children’s to adult services should be standardised across education, health and social care. We propose that the age of transition should be set at 18. This would be the point at which adult education, health and care services take responsibility for the young person, but would not be the end of support. Instead, we propose that there would be two years of enhanced transition support after the age of transition, with discretion to extend further for young people who need additional help.
• The creation of a dedicated Destinations and Progression Service in every local area to coordinate and plan preparation for adulthood leading up to and in the two years after the age of transition, to provide a first port-of-call for advice for young people, drawing together intelligence on local needs to commission the right opportunities and support, and tracking long-term destinations.
• Developing a Preparation for Adulthood Framework, linked to the National Framework and overseen by the National Institute, which would set out the key elements of support that should be in place and the responsibilities of partner agencies to support young people with different needs in their transition to adulthood. (The aim would not be to pigeonhole individual young people, but instead to create a more comprehensive range of options from which young people can choose when pursuing their aspirations.)

There is much scope for change in improving transitions between early years settings and school given its important role in the early years. However, the importance is not reflected in guidance, resourcing or expectations of support in national policy. In the independent report ‘rising needs in the early years’, a series of considerations are explored which include clear expectations for services around the transition to school of children who are likely to need additional support, ensuring that funding spans the transition to reception, and encouraging continuity of support for children’s learning and curriculum planning across EYFS and Year 1. 

Independent advocacy

• What would good independent support look like to help families articulate what they need and ensure the plans made for them reflect that? 

The LGA sees a continued role for SENDIASS (Special Educational Needs and Disability Information, Advice and Support Service) in a reformed SEND and education system, working at arm’s length from councils and providing free, impartial and confidential information, advice and support on SEND matters relating to education, health and social care. These services would need to be sufficiently resourced to meet need quickly and effectively and we would be keen to explore whether work could be undertaken to allow SENDIASS best practice to be shared.

In addition, the Family Information Service (FIS) is crucial for parents and carers to understand more about the services and settings that are available to them. In our research for the practice guide on supporting an inclusive early education, a clear message was shared that successful engagement with parents and carers relies on a strong, inclusive FIS. Effective services hold up-to-date, detailed data on local needs and supply, and can adapt their offer to the needs of diverse communities. While many parents can navigate digital systems to access early education, fully digital or outsourced FIS models risk excluding disadvantaged families. A balanced approach – combining accessible online tools with personalised local support – is required to ensure all families are supported to make informed early education choices. The resources required to reach and support families reflect the level of disadvantage they face. Those needing the most help include children in care, parents with mental health difficulties, families experiencing domestic abuse, those with English as an additional language, families in poverty and children with SEND. Over the past decade, many FIS teams have faced significant budget cuts, limiting their capacity to engage these families. With the increasing complexity of information facing parents, it is crucial that there is consistent and trusted information that they can access and the Family Information Service is a route to this. 

• When needed, what support would help families have their say in resolving disagreements around their child’s provision?

Councils want to see the creation of a more accessible, less adversarial and more effective mechanism for dealing with disputes, whilst retaining the tribunal as backstop where other mechanisms have not resolved disputes successfully. Our research found that there was broad support for creating a wider range of more accessible, less adversarial, and more effective mechanisms for dealing with disputes. There was recognition of the “escalatory” nature of the SEND system, where issues can quickly become legal disputes, and of the cost (in every sense) to children and families of this.