Greg Smith is MP for Mid Buckinghamshire since 2024 having previously served as the MP for Buckingham from 2019.
As the Conservative MP for Mid Buckinghamshire, I see the human cost of the SEND crisis every week in my constituency surgeries. Parents are exhausted from fighting for basic support. Children are left without the right placement, sometimes for months or years. Schools are stretched beyond capacity. This is not abstract policy failure; it is daily reality for families across the country.
This isn’t about political dogma, it’s about children and their families’ lives. My concerns are shared by colleagues across Parliament, of all parties joining me in supporting the SEND Matters Coalition.
I support the ambition to improve early identification and strengthen support in mainstream schools. Extra funding for the mainstream sector is welcome, but it is inauthentic and disingenuous to pretend that this remotely addresses the needs of children with the most complex conditions. There is already insufficient specialist provision for these children, and they require a different approach. We cannot throw the baby out with the bathwater by rushing through mainstream reforms while completely ignoring the unseen children who have so much potential, only to watch them fall through the gaps and leave education altogether.
There are children for whom mainstream provision is never appropriate, even with improved support. Many have already experienced repeated placement breakdowns, exclusion or significant periods out of education. For these children, specialist provision is often the last viable opportunity to stabilise, re-engage with learning and build a future.
The numbers put this in perspective. There are around 1.7 million pupils with SEND and 638,700 children and young people with an Education, Health and Care Plan. Independent special schools account for only around 33,000 placements. Specialist provision is a small but essential part of the system. Removing or restricting it in the name of inclusion would be a false economy that harms the children who need it most.
I have repeatedly raised these issues in Parliament. I have challenged the Education Secretary over the cancellation of a previously committed £18–20 million, purpose-built 152-place SEND school for Buckinghamshire; a project announced under the previous government and scrapped by Labour, replaced with far less funding. I have highlighted delays of up to 56 weeks just to issue an EHCP in my county and the shortage of occupational therapists. These are not isolated problems and they illustrate a system under severe strain.
SEND should also be viewed as an invest-to-save issue. Research by Sonnet Impact found that appropriate SEND provision could generate at least £380,000 in lifetime value to society for each child with complex needs, after accounting for the cost of education. Around two-thirds of that benefit flows through the wider economy, with further gains for local authorities, the NHS and the justice system.
The alternative is considerably more expensive. When a child is left without suitable education, the economic cost falls on the whole family through lost earnings, increased caring responsibilities and long-term dependency. In 2023-24 the average direct resource cost for a 15-17-year-old in a male young offenders’ institution was £179,496 a year which is more than twice the annual cost of independent special school placements for children with the most complex needs. Many of these young people risk becoming NEET, with the lifelong costs that follow. The greater cost is often the failure to provide the right support early enough.
I am particularly concerned that the social, emotional and mental health (SEMH) dimension of reform has received insufficient attention. Anxiety, trauma, emotional dysregulation, school refusal, persistent absence and exclusion frequently reflect significant underlying needs rather than simple behavioural problems. Treating these issues as matters of discipline rather than unmet need risks compounding the damage.
It is concerning that the reforms do not appear to reflect the lived experience of constituents. MPs from across Parties report that the government’s top lines simply do not match what is arriving in their postbags. That disconnect should not be ignored.
The next stage of change must therefore protect specialist capacity for children whose needs cannot be met elsewhere and treat those with complex needs differently. We need to strengthen genuine early intervention before children reach crisis, give proper weight to SEMH needs, and properly assess long-term outcomes and costs alongside any short-term savings while ensuring parents, children and constituency MPs help shape the detail.
The Government has an opportunity to build a SEND system that improves outcomes while delivering better value for taxpayers. The measure of success should not be how many specialist placements are reduced. It should be how many children leave education with a future.
Children with the most complex needs and those struggling with SEMH cannot be an afterthought in this process – or made to conform with political and ideological worldviews. They must be at the centre of it and treated with the respect as individuals that they deserve.