King’s Speech

Baroness Spielman Excerpts

Tuesday 19th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Spielman (Con)]

My Lords, I must start by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Hobby, on his powerful speech, rooted in his substantial career in education, and the other noble Lords and Baronesses who made maiden speeches today.

The education programme laid out in the Speech is strikingly thin. On one hand, I take this as a positive: it is widely recognised internationally that education in England has in the main been a major success story over the last 15 years, and I spend much of my time now, including this evening, talking to educators from overseas who want to learn from the success of our reforms in England. But of course it is right to address the issues of special educational needs. We have the worst of all worlds at the moment: a hugely expensive system that leaves many parents, and many schools and teachers, unsatisfied. We are labelling a startlingly high proportion of children, including a much wider range of children with lesser needs, and the incentives in the system can be perverse, and in some cases may even be contributing to reducing children’s aspirations and achievement. Also, over the last 30 years, the schools budget itself has increased enormously in real terms, and the share spent on special educational needs has risen inextricably.

The high needs block and children’s disability living allowance together cost every single household in England £500 a year. But this is still not achieving the desired outcomes, and those statutory priorities for SEND and for social care mean that local authorities have less and less money for all their other responsibilities, which is leading to the depressing downgrading of the public realm around us. The White Paper offers little comfort that this Bill will make the right kind of difference. I will pick out just three important points, though there are many others. First, practically, the plan introduces a huge administrative burden on schools, which will have to prepare and maintain an individual plan for every child with SEND—perhaps five or six times as many children as now. Even if these plans cannot be enforced by tribunals, they may contribute to pushing parent expectations beyond the realistic capacity of mainstream schools, and so actually worsen the quality of provision and fray relationships.

Secondly, the references to evidence conceal the fact that there is remarkably little firm evidence of what makes a real difference to outcomes for children with special needs, or what is unjustifiably expensive relative to its cost. It is easier for the state to be kind than to be honest. The sad truth is that much of the current budget could probably be spent much better. In the health sector, this is why NICE was set up to gatekeep health treatments, and I believe that a SEND equivalent is urgently needed. I hope that when the Bill is published, it will make explicit provision for building such a function.

Thirdly, I must point out that the most difficult questions seem to have been ducked, perhaps to avoid taking on either the powerful SEND lobby or Labour Back-Benchers. The proposals are not really going to focus sufficiently clearly on the children who have the most to gain from extra help, and costs will continue to escalate, with guarantees baked in, so a ready-made SEND crisis will be dumped into the lap of the next Government.

Finally, I must point out that the Minister made erroneous remarks about Ofsted inspection of inclusion and of provision for children with SEND, which he said Ofsted would be assessing for the first time. In fact, both were substantial elements of inspection throughout my seven years at Ofsted, including in the 2019 framework, which was unequivocally focused on quality of education for all children. Both inclusion and SEND provision contributed significantly to judgments of quality of education and of overall school effectiveness. This would be a good opportunity for him to correct the record, as this misstatement appeared in the Government’s consultation document as well as in his speech.