'We Are Analysing Your Feedback': The Still-Missing SEND Response

So it's the first full week of September and you know the exact feeling. Oh, absolutely. It's a very specific feeling. Right. You are walking back through those doors. You have the new class list in your hand. You have the new timetable all mapped out and you face exactly the same question at the very first SEND briefing of the year. Yeah. And we both know exactly what that question is. Has anything happened with the white paper over the summer? Right. And you know, the honest answer to that question actually takes a bit longer than just saying no, because some things have happened, even if the main thing everyone expects to have happened, well, hasn't.

This is the education commute. Both voices on this show are synthesized. The judgment isn't. Yeah. And for this journey, I am sitting in the Senco's chair. So I'm the one who gets asked these questions by staff, by parents, by leadership, and honestly. Yeah. I'm incredibly tired of just answering. We're still waiting. I can imagine. And I am sitting in the policy reader's chair today. I have literally read every single document the White Paper's own page has produced since February. Which is quite the task. It is.

And today we are counting them properly for you. Six and a half months laid end to end in order. with the exact dates. OK. So if we're doing this properly, I mean, let's look at the ledger, because the way we remembered in the staff room is that this massive announcement dropped. Everyone braced for a total overhaul. And then, well, did the Department for Education just go completely radio silent? Not immediately, no. Let's begin on the 23rd of February. Right. The white paper is published. It is laid in Parliament alongside a consultation titled Send Reform.

Putting children and young people first. Yeah, that is the bit everyone actually remembers I mean that is the document that was sitting in every staff room in the country For what about a fortnight at least a fortnight? Yeah, people were highlighting sections They were preparing for massive shifts and how we operate exactly for about a fortnight It was literally the only thing anyone talked about and then as you say it seemed to go quiet But that quietness is itself a significant part of the story because there actually was movement On the 27th of April, a correction slip suddenly appears on the consultation's own page.

Wait, mid -consultation? Right in the middle of it. Oh, wow. And there is absolutely no explanation given for what it actually corrected. Unbelievable. But, well, we cover that properly back on Show 41, so we don't need to rehash the details of the slip itself here. No, no, we're not repeating all of that today. We just need to register it for the timeline, you know? It happened, it is logged, and we move on. Yeah. But that brings us to May, doesn't it? Yes, it does. On the 18th of May, the consultation closes.

Okay, so if we tally that up, by the 18th of May, we have three actual events in under three months. The white paper is published, the correction slip appears out of nowhere, and the consultation closes. Three tangible events. And to be perfectly fair to the Department for Education, that is a genuinely busy quarter by the standards of education policy. If you had asked me back in May how the rest of the year would play out, I would have confidently said, you know, we would definitely have a response by the autumn term.

Right. But here we are in the autumn term. So what happened after May the 18th? Well, I checked the page again this week, this first week of September, and the status line still reads closed consultation. OK. And right underneath it is the Department for Education's own holding text. What does it say? It reads, word for word, we are analyzing your feedback. Visit this page again soon to download the outcome. Visit this page again soon? Yeah. I mean, I want to pause on that word. How long has that exact sentence telling us to check back soon been sitting there on the page?

It has been sitting there since the 18th of May. Wow. 16 weeks, give or take, at the time we are recording this discussion. 16 weeks. Can you translate that into school terms for me? Because 16 weeks in government bureaucracy might just be a plip, but in a school, that is a lifetime. Just give it some context for the Senkos listening. Yeah. Let's look at it this way. 16 weeks is the whole of the summer half -term. Right. It is the entirety of the six -week summer holidays.

Yeah. And it is the first full week back in September. Oh my goodness. Think about a child who sat their year six SATs while that consultation was closing in May. Okay, yeah. That same child has now finished primary school, had a summer break, started secondary school, walked through those new doors, and had their very first form tutor meeting. An entire educational transition has happened for that child. Exactly, and the page still says soon. is the reality behind the still waiting I keep having to say at the gates.

So let's just say the actual number out loud. How many government responses have there been to this consultation? Zero. Zero. Zero government responses to that consultation in the six and a half months since the white paper it belongs to was published and no date given for one. Zero. It does not say delayed until autumn. It does not say expected shortly due to overwhelming feedback. It is just zero. And there's absolutely no reason given anywhere for the gap. That is the honest factual way to state it.

And, you know, it is deeply worth being precise here because saying we are still waiting all the time can start to sound to your staff like nothing is happening at all. Right. And that's not quite sure either. I hear you. But if I walk into a staff briefing tomorrow and just say the word zero. My staff are going to panic. They're going to assume the whole reform is scrapped, or worse, that something massive is happening behind closed doors that we aren't prepared for. I get that.

How is telling them zero actually helpful to me as a Senco? I mean, what has actually moved underneath this silence on the response? Well, two crucial things. And the really important point for your staff is that these things haven't moved. That is exactly the reassurance you need to give them. OK, what are they? First is the legislative timeline. The reform system isn't expected to take effect until September 2029, and even that is subject to Parliament. September 2029, got it. Second is the EHCP protection. No changes to existing plans before at least September 2030.

Let's spend some time on that second date because those two words, at least. are doing some very heavy lifting. They really are. At least is a floor. Right. It is not a fixed point in time. September of 2030 is the absolute earliest anything could change for an existing education, health and care plan. It isn't a date when something will change. Exactly. And remember, those are two separate pillars, not one. Meaning this system itself and the individual plans are on completely different clocks. Precisely. The system reform clock points to 2029, subject to Parliament.

The existing EHCP clock points to at least 2030. Treating them as a single date is exactly how people end up frightening families, making them think everything is going to change abruptly next September. It isn't. And there is a third pillar, isn't there? The bit in between now and 2029. The interim. And, you know, it's the pillar nobody talks about because it sounds like nothing is happening. But the interim is not a gap here. The current system stays in place in full for years. You do not just stop providing support while waiting for a reform.

And crucially, there's a commitment in principle to preparation funding for schools during that period. So the government has explicitly stated a principle that schools will receive preparation funding. The principle is stated, yes. The actual shape of that funding isn't published yet, but it is a real commitment on the books. So telling your staff to watch for the detail on that preparation funding is a real instruction. It isn't just a filler line to make it sound like we know what's going on. Exactly. It is the most concrete thing a school can actually watch for this year.

This is incredibly clarifying. Both of those dates, 2029 for the system and 2030 for the plans. I can say with absolute confidence at the school gate because they are not waiting on the consultation response to be finalized. Right. They are written into the timeline regardless of this silence. Correct. And this brings us to a fourth thing that is often assumed to be imminent but actually isn't, which is the update to the send code of practice. Right. The government's explicit commitment is to update the code after legislation.

So logically, If the legislation for the system isn't expected until September 2029, the Code of Practice update must follow that. It's downstream of the 2029 date. Precisely. Because you cannot update a statutory code of practice for a system that hasn't been legally established by Parliament yet. No, that makes total sense. Therefore, it is not something arriving this year or next year. Which means the SIN code of practice we work to today is the code we will work to for quite a while. The 2015 code remains statutory and it remains completely unchanged.

You need to plan against the document that actually exists, not the ghost of a document that might exist. next decade. Okay, so that covers the system, the EHCPs, and the code. What we can't say with confidence, though, is the status of the specialist provision packages list. Families ask about this constantly. No, we can't. Here is the exact status of that. An indicative list was published with the white paper. An expert panel is developing the full version, and there is no publication date for that either. No date at all?

I checked the page again for this show. There is absolutely nothing new. So that is not a case of there's no update because nobody's looking. That is genuinely nothing to report. Which is a very different kind of silence compared to the consultation response silence and it is vital to tell them apart. How so? The consultation response is a document that is overdue by any ordinary everyday reading of the phrase, visit this page again soon. The specialist provision packages list is a process that was always going to take time and simply hasn't reached its own milestone yet.

Okay, well, here's my pushback then. And this is exactly what a frustrated Senko is thinking right now. Let's hear it. If I'm being asked every fortnight and the answer is genuinely zero, what's the point of an episode that says zero out loud? Because as you mentioned earlier, zero on its own gets heard as, nothing's happening, they've abandoned it. And staff act on that vacuum. Right, they really do. They stop reading the official updates, or worse, they start believing the cluster meeting rumors instead. Oh, the rumors are endless.

Exactly. But if you give them the actual ledger telling them three real events happened, followed by a documented silence and here are two specific dates that haven't moved, that gives a sender something concrete to actually repeat. Yeah, I see that. It gives a governor something they can actually check. It replaces rumor with facts. And what is the honest concession here? Because as much as we look at the ledger today, things can change. The honest concession is that a response could land the week this discussion goes out.

Nothing I have said predicts otherwise. What I can tell you is what the page says today, what it has said since May, and that no date has ever been given. If that changes, it changes, and we will say so. But right now, this is the steadier, truthful baseline. That is fair. So let's bring this right down to the ground level. Next time I am stopped in the quarter and asked, is anything happening with the white paper? What is the exact narrative I give? You say there were three events in the paper's first three months.

Then a summer of complete silence on the one that matters most, the response. Okay. But you also point to two protections that don't depend on that response at all. Nothing before 2029 on the system. Nothing before 2030 on existing plans. That is a much steadier answer than just shrugging and saying still waiting. It is specific about what is actually true and what is actually just quiet. And it will be the exact same answer at October half term, unless the page changes. Nothing in that narrative depends on this week's news, because there hasn't been any.

Let's apply this same idea to three specific rooms in a school. I want to know exactly how this information changes the conversations we are having with families. Okay, let's do it. First room, we are in a primary setting. This is the reception parent who has just been told their child is on SEN support. They've read the headlines and they ask you whether the new system changes what their child is going to receive. The answer is that it doesn't. Not this year, not next year. And the useful follow -on for that parrot is that SEN support isn't a waiting room for the reform.

It is the thing that should be working right now under the current unchanged 2015 code. Okay. Room two. We were in a secondary school. This is the year nine EHCP annual review taking place in October. Run it entirely under the current code. Nothing in the white paper is law and the plan is protected until at least 2030. So no sudden changes. Exactly. If a family arrives at that review anxious about the changes, the first 90 seconds of that meeting should be spent entirely taking that anxiety off the table.

You look them in the eye and assure them the protections are legally in place. Okay. And room three. We are in a specialist setting. The topic is the specialist provision packages. This is the one thing your families keep asking about because it affects them directly. And it's the one thing with no date at all. How do we frame that? You give them the whole truthful sentence. Indicative list, expert panel, no date. That exact phrase. That exact phrase. Do not round it up to coming soon, because you don't know that, and do not round it down to shelved, because that isn't true either.

It is about maintaining trust by not guessing. Precisely. Which brings us to a couple of questions for you, the listener, to test this in your own environment. Tomorrow at break, ask whoever is next to the kettle. Always a good place to start. Right. Ask them. If a parent asked today what's actually happened since February, could you name the three real events, the white paper, the correction slip, and the closed consultation? Or would you just shrug and say nothing? And if a governor asked whether the EHCP protection date has changed at any point since February, could you say confidently it hasn't?

Or would you be checking your notes? It hasn't. That one you can say without checking out. We promised you clarity, and part of that clarity is recognizing the long -term impact of this holding pattern. Yeah, it really does have an impact. Because the real question isn't just when the government response will finally drop. It's how much trust the system will have lost from families by the time it finally does. 16 weeks of soon, takes a toll on confidence. It absolutely does. But for now, let's get to the four things off the drive for you to take away and use immediately.

Let's run through them. One, zero government responses issued in the six and a half months since the White Paper, as of the first week of September, and absolutely no date given for one. Two, Three real events did land in the first three months. The white paper, the correction slip, and the closed consultation. But the page has said, visit this page again soon, since the 18th of May. Three. Nothing before September 2029 on the system, and nothing before September 2030 on existing EHCPs. These dates are unchanged all year, regardless of the response silence.

Four, the specialist provision packages list is genuinely unmoved. Indicative list published, expert panel working, no date. So it has not been silently dropped, and it has not been silently progressed. Exactly. And everything we have discussed is linked in the show notes for you to verify yourself. Remember, we're the trailer, not the film. Both voices on this show are synthesized. The judgment isn't. Safe trip in. See you at the gates.