In the arcane language of Westminster, a Green Paper is supposed to be less well developed than a White Paper - a consultation on some initial ideas, rather than a plan ready for legislation.

But in many ways, the SEND Green Paper is meatier than the Schools White Paper that came out on Monday.

It offers some genuinely new approaches to managing the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and alternative provision (AP) systems, which have been ignored for far too long.

No one can doubt an overhaul is badly needed.

Big problems to fix

As the Green Paper sets out, the current system is very inconsistent between local authorities, is an absolute nightmare for parents to navigate, and is entirely unsustainable financially.

Funding has increased by 40 per cent over the past three years and even with that, most local authorities have been forced to borrow or take money from other budgets to manage.

Essentially, the DfE’s solution to the problem is to centralise, creating what they catchily call a “national SEND and alternative provision system”. This would mean national standards for provision, a standardised process for education, health and care plans (EHCPs), set bands and tariffs matched to specific needs, and much more oversight of local strategies.

All of this would be under the aegis of a National SEND Delivery Board.

In theory, this makes sense, but it is a massively complex delivery challenge. It’s a cliché to say that “everything will be in the implementation” but it really is true in this case. It will also not be without controversy.

Covertly cutting choice

While the Green Paper is coy about saying this explicitly, one key way it seeks to reduce costs is by reducing choice for parents.

At the moment it’s often far too difficult to get an EHCP but if you do get one, you have a lot of choice over what provision to use and the legal right to ask that any school is named on the EHCP.

Under these proposals, parents will instead get a “tailored list of settings…that are appropriate to meet the child or young person’s needs”.

Depending on exactly how tailored these lists are and who is doing the tailoring, this could prove very controversial. The problem with making the system “national” is that suddenly the DfE and the secretary of state will be in the crosshairs of every unhappy parent.

Parent groups are also expressing concern about proposals for mandatory mediation before the use of a SEND tribunal (if a parent thinks a local authority has made an unfair decision in refusing to award an EHCP).

At the moment parents have to consider mediation but don’t have to use it. Again, the fear is that this is a cost-cutting measure by the backdoor.

The plan for standards

One thing the Green Paper doesn’t do is break the conflict of interest that has dogged the SEND system for many years.

Local authorities will still be both the commissioner of provision and the funder, so will still have an incentive to reject applications.

The DfE will be hoping that national standards and national tariffs will make this harder to do in practice.

The national tariffs themselves are another opportunity to reduce costs by fixing set rates for specific needs.

At the moment local authorities differ considerably in the amounts they spend and, legally, while some do use bands or tariffs, these can be challenged by parents if they don’t believe it will meet the requirements set out in the EHCP.

Again, the DfE will be hoping that parents will accept a trade-off that offers some targeted help faster and more consistently but doesn’t come with all the rights that a current EHCP does.

Why the House of Lords will have its say

Making all this happen will require legislative changes, so the government will have to manage the politics very carefully. SEND is an issue on which the Lords, in particular, tend to pay significant attention.

As any legislation will come towards the end of the Parliament, they will have the power to stop anything passing before the next election should they choose to do so.

Given the potential controversies around SEND support, the proposals for alternative provision will likely get less attention, but they are a highlight of the Green Paper.

It is a sector that rarely gets any serious attention despite supporting some of the most vulnerable children in our society.

The paper proposes integrating AP into the SEND system, more transparency around pupils moving in and out of AP, and a badly needed review of unregistered provision.

Most significant is the shift to multi-year funding, which will help a lot as they typically provide a lot of short placements, so per-pupil funding makes it very hard to manage budgets.

Substantive proposals deserve credit

The DfE should be applauded for coming up with a substantive set of proposals on issues that are all too easy to shove onto the “too difficult” pile for someone else to pick up.

But it will still be very difficult.

Especially as they are trying to do this with very little money available. It’s much easier to push through major change when you can be generous to everyone. Rebuilding the system while holding down costs will make it much harder to win over parent groups in particular.

Hopefully, the consultation launched by this Green Paper will be the start of a collaborative effort to make these changes work. If it isn’t they may never happen.  

Sam Freedman is a former senior policy adviser at the Department for Education and a senior fellow at the Institute of Government