SEND, the disadvantage gap and attendance: What's in Labour's plan for schools?

After months of delay, the government has finally announced its long-awaited plan to reform the education system in England.

The proposed shake-up of special education needs (SEND) support has drawn significant attention, amid concerns the reforms could trigger a backlash from Labour backbenchers.

In the Schools White Paper, published on Monday, the government announced it would spend £4bn to make mainstream schools more inclusive for children with SEND over the next three years.

But the Schools White Paper is also part of Labour's broader vision to reform education - focusing heavily on disadvantaged students, alongside plans to get missing children back to school as absence rates have soared post-pandemic.

Here, ITV News has pulled together the key proposals.

Special needs reform

The key change announced on Monday is that legal support plans, known as ECHPs, will be reserved for those with the highest needs from 2035, meaning around one in eight children currently receiving the most support will move to new plans, according to government estimates.

Instead, new legally-binding documents called individual support plans (ISPs) will be introduced, with multiple levels of support depending on the child's needs.

The government says there will be a universal high quality of teaching for all children, with tiers of support called 'targeted', 'targeted plus', and 'specialist'.

Children classed as needing 'targeted' and 'targeted plus' support will have ISPs, and do not need a diagnosis. Only those who fall under the 'specialist' tier will be entitled to an EHCP.

The government insists it will develop and build the new inclusive mainstream system over the next four years, before any children lose their EHCPs.

The number of children diagnosed with SEND has rocketed in recent years, along with the number of children with EHCPs, which has led to ballooning costs for local authorities.

In the last ten years, the amount local councils spend on SEND has almost doubled from £7.8bn to a projected £14.8bn for this year.

While councils struggle with huge budget deficits driven by SEND, families often face lengthy legal battles to get their children the basic level of support.

The government says it is focused on improving special needs support in mainstream schools, shifting away from the current system, which has seen rising numbers of children with SEND attending costly specialist schools.

Speaking on Monday, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson described the SEND system as "broken", saying "children's educations and lives have suffered".

Phillipson said the level of support children receive will increase under the plans: "Every child will get the brilliant support they deserve, when they need it, as routine and without a fight.”

After 2029, the government says children will also be reassessed at each phase of school - that means pupils currently in year three or above will keep their EHCP until at least age 16, and those currently in year two or below will be reassessed when they transition to year seven.

As part of the plans, the government has announced £1.6bn over three years for early years settings, schools and colleges to help provide more support in mainstream schools.

While another £1.8bn over the same period will create a new support service made up of specialists like SEND teachers and speech and language therapists in every area.

Schools will get £3.7bn of capital investment from last year's Budget to create spaces away from classrooms where SEND students can get extra help. That money will also go towards 60,000 more specialist places in mainstream schools.

The government also announced £200m to better train teachers in SEND support, and schools will be encouraged to join local groupings and work more closely together on SEND.

Shadow education secretary Laura Trott argued extra work would come from carrying out individual support plans (ISPs), branding them a “recipe for disaster”.

Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey criticised the Tories for their “failure to apologise for the crisis”.Disadvantage gap and white working-class children falling behind

The government also announced several policies to help the most disadvantaged children.

Phillipson said on Monday that "background shouldn't mean destiny", insisting "how a child grows up shouldn't dictate where they end up."

She set a new target to halve the gap between students from low-income backgrounds and their more affluent peers, pledging "where deprivation is deepest, I will be boldest".

The government says that if it hits that target, children from low-income backgrounds will achieve around a full grade higher in their GCSEs.

Phillipson announced she will change how funding for disadvantaged students is allocated to schools, meaning it will now be based more on how low the family income is, how long that has been the case, and where the family lives, rather than how many children are on free school meals.

Schools will be required to join a trust as part of the changes, and local authorities will be given new powers to create trusts.

Trust schools are still funded by the government, but are run by charitable trusts, often to help drive school improvement.

“This is an opportunity for schools to come together in new partnerships to take on challenges and bring further innovation to the system," the white paper says.

Labour is also launching two new schemes to target the most deprived students, one focused on the North East and the other on coastal areas.

Both projects will also focus particularly on the performance of white working-class pupils, who have some of the lowest education outcomes.

"We will not tolerate the blind eye that has been turned to the underperformance of white working-class children," the government document says.

Newly-appointed headteachers will also be offered up to £15,000 to work in parts of the country where they're "needed most".

Attendance and 'missing' children

The government has also set a target to improve attendance rates, one of the biggest challenges facing schools since the pandemic.

While persistent absence (defined as missing at least 10% of lessons) has fallen in the last couple of years, severe absence (missing at least half of all lessons) continued to rise. But both figures remain significantly higher than they were pre-Covid.

Ministers have committed to improving the attendance rate by 1.3 percentage points to over 94%.

The government is also trying to fix what it calls the broken "social contract" between schools and families, with the white paper aiming to make families "believe in education once again".

It was announced on Monday that the government will work with schools, local authorities and families to create "minimum expectations" from each group, to improve relationships between schools and families.

It will also send out specialist attendance advisers to the areas with the worst attendance rates.

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