The first of a two part article, by Joe Langabeer
There has been a crisis, though less widely expressed than that of the cost of living or the collapse of public services, in the state of Special Education Needs schooling. With cuts to local authority funding over the past 15 years, enacted by the Tories and with Labour offering little to restore them, local governments are going bankrupt, leaving collapsing SEN state schools across Britain with virtually no support.
This goes hand in hand with the exponential rise in the number of young people and children being diagnosed with the most acute needs, which, according to a Financial Times article last year, had risen by 83% since 2015. These statistics have given fuel to conspiracy theorists and the right-wing, as many of these new diagnoses relate to autism, which is the most common type of need for pupils with support plans. It currently stands at over 480,000 pupils, according to the Department for Education.
Considering there are 12.7 million children in the UK, it seems odd that such a relatively small number has led to an “acute crisis” in SEN education. However, the crisis has little to do with the rise in diagnoses and far more to do with councils simply being unable to afford special needs education.
Greed and Education
Because local governments can no longer supply adequate SEN provision, they have begun the perilous process of outsourcing and funding private sector suppliers. These providers have profited enormously from desperate parents in what is now a booming business that exploits the most vulnerable, while excluding many children with care plans whose families cannot afford fees.
Much of the right-wing and establishment press has capitalised on this growing privatisation of SEN schooling to attack Labour’s proposed VAT increase on private schools, as it would affect private SEN provision. It is, however, one of the few Labour policies I agree with, and Labour’s rebuttals have been sound.
Their stance is that all children should have the right to a decent standard of education, not just the privileged few. Where Labour has fallen short, is in failing to support local government to provide proper SEN support in both mainstream schools and those catering specifically to SEN students. Instead, they have allowed these institutions to collapse, with some families being able to move to private provision, while the majority are left behind.
This has also led to a troubling rise in home-schooling, as many parents believe the system cannot accommodate their child. It will do the child no good to be home-schooled. Parents are not trained teachers, safeguarding is compromised, and children miss out on developing essential social skills needed for the workplace and wider society, leaving them increasingly isolated.
SEN education is in crisis, and the only real solution lies in socialist policies, such as proper funding for local government, alongside the abolition and public ownership of private school provision, so that it becomes a service accessible to all children with special needs, not just the privileged few.
SEN Funding Cuts
With the number of cases rising, the Institute for Fiscal Studies reported in 2025 that funding for Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) has fallen dramatically, from about £28,000 per pupil to roughly £18,000, a £10,000 drop over the last decade. Most spending goes to both state special schools and independent special schools. Current estimates put the figure at £1.7 billion for independent schools and £2.5 billion for state schools nationally.
It seems completely ludicrous that so much money is being funnelled to prop up the private sector. That funding could cover and improve public sector special schools, rather than allow big companies to monopolise special needs education. When you examine the allocation of EHCP funding, much of it is concentrated in London, where many boroughs have larger local authority budgets.
Meanwhile, regions such as the East of England, the South West and the North West have seen very small amounts, with funding in recent years falling to punitive levels of around £15,000 per pupil.
Cuts to council budgets have also hit mainstream schools. They are required to fund the first £6,000 of additional SEND provision costs before accessing top-up funding from the council. Introduced by Michael Gove in 2014 to shift costs away from councils and onto schools, this policy has had real-terms consequences. Pupil need has risen, but schools are increasingly unable to provide support.
This sits alongside wider cuts to local government funding, on which many schools rely. An IFS report in 2024 found that funding declined between 2010 and 2017, with only slight increases and stagnation until the COVID-19 pandemic. Real-terms funding has fallen sharply, with only modest recent rises that remain well below the previous Conservative administration.
Many councils are now in financial distress, and six have issued Section 114 notices, restricting all but legally required spending. Neither the last Tory government nor this Labour government has sought to put right the damage done during austerity.
Data from School Cuts, reported by the Guardian in February 2024, showed that almost three-quarters of schools in England have faced real-terms cuts since 2010. They estimate that £12.2 billion would be needed to reverse the 70% of cuts made by previous Conservative governments. Much of this would address crumbling buildings, after the RAAC scandal, 235 Department for Education sites were still affected as of November 2024, according to the Guardian.
A substantial share would also need to go to SEN provision, where the system is increasingly in crisis. We need proper funding to create high-quality state schools designed for SEN, and better support for special needs in mainstream state schools so no pupil is left to fend for themselves.
The Labour government fell far short in its 2024 budget, when it committed only an extra £1.8bn for schools, with total spending at £8bn overall, already close to the previous Conservative level – while the £12bn figure referenced earlier would need to be additional investment.
The rise of private SEN schooling
Make no mistake: it is the Tories’ fault that SEN provision is in this crisis. In their pursuit of cutting SEN support, they have relied on local councils outsourcing away from state SEN schools and funnelling funding into private provision. This amounts to a windfall of billions given to private companies, expanding into what they see as a lucrative market. These firms are leeching money from local councils and desperate parents seeking essential support for their children.
The Financial Times noted that revenues of the three largest private SEN providers have almost doubled since 2019. At the same time, the UK’s spending watchdog warned that councils are finding the system “financially unsustainable”, as deficits continue to spiral across state and private provision.
A National Audit Office report from October 2024 highlighted that the national average for pupil fees in a private SEN school was a staggering £62,000 per year, compared to £24,000 in the state sector. To put that in perspective, it’s more expensive than a three-year university degree. Much of this spending is not coming from parents, but from government.
The FT report revealed that in some of the top companies providing SEN care, such as Horizon Care & Education Group, a key “business risk” identified was the possibility of councils losing control of their spending. It is clear that private SEN schools are raking in vast sums at the expense of the state sector, with no real savings to councils. The entire system is designed to generate profit for these companies.
Many of these providers are not solely focused on SEN care. Most are subsidiaries of larger conglomerates. Horizon Care, for example, began as a residential care company for children but has since branched into SEN care, where more profit can be made from state support.
A BBC investigation in 2022, using Ofsted data, found that Horizon and similar private care providers had over 75% higher rates of whistleblowing complaints and police investigations than those run by charities or councils.
Private provision takes more public cash while providing a poorer service to vulnerable children. Another example is Aurora, a subsidiary of the supposedly “environmentally friendly” Octopus Energy group, whose profits rose 93% over the past five years to £74mn, most of it coming from local authorities and other publicly funded bodies.
With councils already overspending on their high-needs education budgets, and that figure still rising, the majority of this money is going straight into the hands of private firms that deliver inferior outcomes. Councils absolutely need better funding for SEN provision, but that funding must not fill the pockets of millionaires. This should be seen as a national scandal, though it is conveniently ignored by the right-wing press, which defends these schools in its broader campaign to protect capital.
The effects ripple outwards. With most parents priced out of private SEN provision and trust in the state system collapsing due to chronic underfunding, more families are turning to home-schooling. There has been a 60% increase in home-educated children since the pandemic, according to data from the Institute for Public Policy Research reported by The Guardian in 2024.
Many parents cited their child’s anxiety in handling mainstream education as the main reason. A council home education adviser described it as largely “forced” home-schooling, families in poverty, desperate to help their children, believing that removing them from school is the only option left.
We have very little data on the negative effects of home-schooling, largely because such a small portion of the population is affected. The limited research available, often produced by private companies selling home-schooling courses, is unreliable. What we do know, from a 2021 study is that social isolation in children increases the risk of depression, cardiovascular disease and metabolic disorders in adulthood.
Children and teenagers should not be home-schooled. They need to be part of a supportive education system that helps them develop socially and emotionally, not one that isolates them. They must learn resilience and communication, skills essential both for their own wellbeing and for future participation in the workplace and wider society. The failure to support state SEN provision, while enabling private providers to flourish inside mainstream and specialist education, is driving parents away from schools altogether.
Of course, the defenders of capital have been planting these seeds for decades, eroding our education system and handing profits to the private sector. In a Telegraph opinion piece, right-wing columnist Zoe Strimpel branded Labour “evil” for imposing VAT on private schools, claiming it would harm poor and SEN pupils.
That is not evil. What is truly evil is private schools using public money to profit while giving vulnerable children an inferior education. It is evil that councils are going bankrupt, unable to provide basic SEN support in mainstream schools, while executives pocket taxpayers’ money. It is evil that the same papers which defended austerity now feign outrage at its consequences, children growing up in poverty, welfare slashed, education budgets gutted, and SEN provision left to rot, all to protect corporate profits and low tax rates for the wealthy.
That is real evil. The greed of those exploiting vulnerable children must be stopped, and their educational establishments taken into public ownership, without compensation, because that money belongs to the taxpayer, not to the profiteers who have done nothing to earn it.
