In this new era of austerity, the fight is on for the rights of children with special educational needs | John Harris

AAutumn, it seems, will begin on Tuesday with a standard speech from Keir Starmer. The cheery anthem that brought New Labour to power has been given a frosty remix: “It will get worse before it gets better,” he will reportedly warn, while announcing “tough choices” and “unpopular decisions”. To no one's surprise, he and Rachel Reeves will clearly stick to their pledge of austerity. In the portfolios where Labour ministers are gaining a foothold, only those “reform projects” that aim to cut costs have any chance of success. But as winter sets in, they will face ever louder demands for the opposite: money to fill deep gaps and repair 14 long years of damage.

One great story embodies all of this. It centres on children and young people in England whose education and care fall under the category of 'special educational needs and disabilities' (Send). The system designed to help them is overseen by local councils and civil servants who often seem mired in failure and see no way out. As with so many of our national problems, Much of the chaos can be traced back to the coalition between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, and a story that Starmer, Reeves and her colleagues should remember that drastic cuts not only ruin lives, but also quickly have the opposite effect: costs rise, often uncontrollably.

Last month, an ITV investigation found that almost a third of parents whose children have special needs had to use the law to get the support they needed, and that well over half of special needs pupils were forced to spend time away from school. Local government ombudsman Amerdeep Somal recently told the Guardian that the special needs system was “completely disastrous”. During my five weeks travelling around the country during the election campaign, I was surprised by the number of people I spoke to who had either had direct experience of the crisis or whose families and friends had had their daily lives virtually dominated by it.

Over the last decade, the number of children in the system has almost doubled. Despite recent increases in funding, outcomes appear to be worsening, while deficits at local special schools, currently totalling £3.2 billion, are expected to rise to £5 billion by 2026. The result is growing panic and a toxic platitude that now appears across the media: the idea that local authority financial crises are largely due to pushing parents and excessive 'demand'.

One key element sets Send apart from other policies. Thanks to legislation introduced in the 1970s, thousands of children and young people with special needs have a legal right to their educational provision, enforced by an official tribunal. Since 2014, such entitlements have been set out in education, health and care plans (EHCPs). These are not easy to obtain and they are no guarantee that provision will actually be delivered. But for families who struggle with constant authority – and I speak from experience here: I have a teenage son with autism and learning difficulties and an EHCP – they provide an important means of holding institutions to account. At last count, 98% of Send tribunal decisions were in favour of parents.

Over the past five years, the number of EHCPs has increased by 72% to 576,000. This is partly due to a change introduced a decade ago when their scope was expanded at both ends of the age range. But there are other, even bigger factors. One is increased needs related to language and speech, and issues that fall under the heading of social, emotional and mental health – some of which are due to the pandemic. Then there is the simple fact that as our understanding of child development has grown (the detection of autism in girls is a good example), families' need for help has also increased.

Any half-functioning support system should be able to cope with these changes. But what stands in the way is the impact of local austerity and the failings of English school policy. From 2010, the closure of Sure Start children's centres brought an end to early intervention programmes, leaving families facing crises that cost endless money. As cash-strapped mainstream schools have laid off their teaching assistants, families have been told they have no choice but to seek official help from the local authority – and in many cases, access much more costly specialist care. A school system built on discipline and 'achievement' has only exacerbated the same problem.

That's where we are. In his first speech in the Commons as Prime Minister, Starmer said local authorities were now “unable to provide even basic services to children with special educational needs”. Bridget Phillipson, the new Education Secretary, speaks of “a broken system in desperate need of long-term overhaul”. Last month, a new report commissioned by the Local Government Association and the County Councils Network was published. “Send poses an existential threat to the financial sustainability of local government,” it said, in a classic example of how bureaucratic language sometimes obscures terrible arguments: if someone were to say that disabled children posed an “existential threat” to anything, there would be a completely justified outcry.

Elsewhere in the text, it was said that “leaders” of the local organisations concerned questioned whether it was “appropriate for a judicial body” – ie the Send Tribunal – to “make active decisions about the educational provision and placement of children and young people”. The text also stressed that “the State must be clear about where the limits of individual choice and entitlement lie”, which is not difficult to decipher: if councils cannot meet their legal obligations, it seems, the best response is simply to sweep those obligations away.

The Send crisis could be solved. This would require improvements in teacher training, a recruitment drive for support staff accompanied by pay rises, a decisive move away from the Gradgrindian practices of teaching English, the thorough restoration of Sure Start and much more. A lasting solution would also involve acknowledging a fundamental insight: that there are things we now know about education and child psychology that must not be forgotten, and that extra money will be needed to integrate these insights into the way the state delivers education and care.

As the Treasury insists on even more austerity, those of us who depend on these systems may now have to fight for our basic rights and the kind of changes that will preserve those rights. This is best summed up by a slogan heard recently in the US: “We're not going back. Who would?”

• John Harris is a columnist for the Guardian

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