The Department for Education’s top civil servant has said that the government’s SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) review is focusing on ensuring more parents do not need to get an education, health and care plan (EHCP) in order to get what they need for their child.

Permanent secretary Susan Acland-Hood also ruled out getting rid of these plans when she appeared before MPs on the Commons Public Accounts committee this week.

But she declined to say when the government’s ongoing SEND review would be completed when asked if it would be published before the end of the financial year.

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An EHCP is a legal document that describes a child or young person’s special educational, health and social care needs, and sets out how these will be met. They were introduced in 2014.

Committee chair Meg Hiller described an EHCP as being a parents’ “golden ticket” to ensure their children with additional needs get the funding they need throughout their education and she asked whether the system could be replaced as part of the government’s ongoing SEND review.

Ms Acland-Hood said that EHC plans would be kept in place, but she added: “I think the key focus is trying to make sure that for many many more parents they don’t need to pursue an EHCP in order to get the things that they want.” 

The latest government figures show that there were 325,618 pupils in schools with EHCPs in 2020-21 up from 294,758 a year earlier.

Ms Acland-Hood suggested that there has been an issue with the balance of funding being provided to ensure needs are meet through EHCPs.

She said: “The huge value that the EHCP gives to the parent and the pupil is certainty about what is going to be provided.

“The risk is that that comes at the cost of resource to try to make earlier provision in the system before people have had to go through the process that leads to an EHCP.

“We absolutely need a SEND review that addresses that fundamental conundrum.”

She was also questioned about when the review will be published.

The ongoing review was launched by education secretary Gavin Williamson in September 2019. 

Last year, he told MPs on the Commons Education Select Committee that its findings would not be published until the early part of this year, having been delayed because of the Covid crisis.

Ms Hillier said: “I wanted to ask you again about the SEND Review .The last time you were in front of us you told us you would expect it by the end of June. That date has been and gone, so where is the special educational needs and disabilities review?”

Ms Acland-Hood said: “We have had some challenges with the SEND Review because of Covid over the past year but also more fundamentally as the chief inspector noted in her recent report we can see the system in which the SEND system needs to land changing quite fundamentally as a result of the pandemic.”

She said the department wanted to take “a little bit longer” to ensure that the review has taken account of the changing picture caused by the Covid pandemic.