24/04/2026
The White Paper
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Possibly the most controversial and worrying of the proposals contained in the government’s White Paper is the proposal that, when a parent, carer or young person appeals against the placement named in section I of an EHC Plan, the tribunal can find that the local authority acted unreasonably in naming the placement in question, but cannot substitute the name of another setting. Instead, the child or young person in question will be left in limbo, quite possibly without educational provision at all, whilst the local authority reconsiders the question – after which it can name the same placement again.
The rationale behind this proposal, which potentially breaches the right to education and the right to a fair hearing, has been a mystery for some time. However, at a recent online meeting, Georgia Gould, Minister of State of Schools, responded to a direct question on this. She said that it was based on discussions with special schools who had told the DfE that they had had children placed with them against their will when in their view the placement was unsafe, and that this had caused serious problems.
Whilst giving the Minister credit for at least answering the question, those listening were left extremely puzzled by this. If a tribunal has ordered a school placement despite representations that the placement would be unsafe, it can only be because the school and/or LA has failed to provide evidence to that effect, or else that such evidence as it did provide failed to convince them.
So, put yourself in the shoes of the Minister faced with this serious problem. You have two possible remedies: Do you:
(a) Provide training to schools and LA tribunal representatives in how to present their evidence and argue their cases effectively; or
(b) Change the law to take away the rights of parents, carers and young people to ask the tribunal to name the school of their choice, also dealing with any legal challenges that may arise as a result?
On the face of it the answer seems obvious, but apparently that isn’t the case for the DfE.
We have to question seriously whether this is the major problem depicted by the Minister. If it were, it would have received considerable publicity, and as a charity we feel sure we would have come across it – not least because, if those placements really were unsafe, surely the schools in question would have used their right to exclude the pupils in question, given their safeguarding duty to other students, and we would have heard about a stream of cases of children left without placements directly as a result?
If this really is the major motivation claimed, we challenge the Minister to provide chapter and verse in terms of the numbers and types of schools concerned and the statistics over, say, the last five years of failed placements resulting from this problem and no other. We are sure this won’t be difficult, as we are confident that the Ministry has not put forward a major controversial policy initiative without thoroughly researching its evidence base and checking the claims apparently made by the schools in question.
