The Missing Middle

As parents you all know these children; as teachers we have taught them in our classrooms...

These are the young people with SEND learning and developmental needs who ‘fall between two stools’. Too specialist for a general mainstream approach but not severe enough need to qualify for a specialist SEND school.

These kids are the MISSING MIDDLE.

The number of children in UK education with identified SEND is now 1.57 million. 389,000 currently have an EHCP: this has increased by 9% in just one year, and by 64% since 2016. About a third of children with an EHCP are autistic; capable children who, with the right academic, social and mental health support in place, can achieve and find happiness.

Source: “Special educational needs and disability: an analysis and summary of data sources” – Department for Education

Local authorities across England have a gaping black hole in their high needs SEND budgets. The Treasury’s fix, rather than addressing the problem by providing funding to local councils or centralising provision (provision to which these kids are legally entitled) is financial engineering by removing it from councils’ balance sheets until 2026. What happens after then nobody knows. If this cost were included in the P&L, then almost every council in England would be functionally bankrupt. For example, Devon alone has an overspend on its SEND budget this financial year of £154 million. Yes — you did read that right.

❌ Councils don’t want to grant EHCPs to families because they can’t sustain the cost. So they put as many bureaucratic hurdles in place as possible, and wait until families take them to tribunals, which go in parents’ favour 98% of the time.

❌ Mainstream schools don’t want to refer pupils for EHCPs in case they get lumped with legal accountability for delivering expensive one-to-one learning support.

❌ Parents are reluctant to enter a process that they know will involve battling the great big blob of the state. Right now, having a SEND child basically means screaming into the void.

What is clear is that a new way of thinking about schooling for these children is urgently needed. I don’t have the answer. I do know, thought, that at the moment these children are being left to struggle and fail. So much potential is being left on the table.

Picture: Marpha and Vanka (1929) by Kazimir Malevich