Is a system person-centred if children cannot access education?

Published 28 April 2026

The Additional Learning Needs reforms in Wales were intended to create a more unified, person-centred system.

That aim matters.

Person-centred planning was supposed to give children and young people a stronger voice in the support they need. It was supposed to help families, schools, local authorities and services understand the learner’s needs, aspirations and barriers more clearly.

But there is now a difficult question Wales needs to ask:

Can a system be called person-centred if the child or young person at the centre of it cannot access the education they are owed?

The question is not whether the reforms were well-intentioned. The question is whether implementation is protecting access to education in practice.

Person-centred planning should mean more than being heard in a meeting

A person-centred approach should not just mean that a child or young person is invited to express a view.

It should mean that their voice influences what happens next.

If a child says they cannot cope in a setting, but nothing changes, were they heard?

If a young person says they need a different route through education, but the only options offered are unsuitable, were they heard?

If parents explain that a child is breaking down, becoming unsafe, losing access to education or being pushed towards home education, but the system waits until crisis point, were they heard?

Person-centred planning should help identify the support a learner needs to access education. If the end result is that the child or young person loses access to education, something has gone badly wrong.

The practical test

A person-centred system should not be judged only by the language used in legislation, guidance or meeting paperwork.

It should be judged by what happens in real life.

Does the child remain meaningfully connected to education, peers and progression?

Does support arrive before crisis?

Can parents understand where they are in the process?

Can young people move through school, further education, health, social care, transport and benefits systems without falling between them?

Are parent carers forced out of work because the system has not made education accessible for their child?

Is the system preventing secondary harm, or allowing unmet need to become long-term mental health injury?

If the answer is no, then the system may be person-centred in language but not in lived experience.

What the latest out-of-school figures show

The latest Welsh Government data on pupils educated other than at school should concern anyone interested in whether the ALN system is working in practice.

In 2024/25, there were 3,014 pupils receiving some type of Education Other Than at School provision in Wales. Of these, 2,684 pupils were mainly educated outside school, which is 5.8 per 1,000 pupils and the highest rate since the data series began in 2009/10. Welsh Government also states that the number of pupils mainly educated outside school is trending upwards and has almost tripled proportionately since 2009/10 [1].

That matters because being educated outside school is not a neutral statistic.

For some learners, Education Other Than at School may be the right provision, including where health needs mean ordinary school attendance is not currently possible.

For others, it may reflect breakdown, delay, unsuitable placement, lack of support, reduced timetables, exclusion risk, or a system that failed to respond early enough.

The question is not simply whether more children are outside school.

The question is why.

ALN and SEN pupils are over-represented

The figures are even more striking when ALN and SEN are considered.

In 2024/25, pupils with any SEN or ALN provision were mainly educated outside school at a rate of 47.8 per 1,000 pupils, compared with 5.8 per 1,000 pupils in the overall pupil population. For pupils with a local authority-maintained Individual Development Plan, the rate was 134.4 per 1,000 pupils [1].

That is not a small difference.

It suggests that children and young people with identified additional learning needs are far more likely to be educated outside school than the general pupil population.

If the purpose of reform was to create a clearer, more person-centred system, then this trend needs serious scrutiny.

EOTAS and elective home education are different, but both raise access questions

Education Other Than at School and elective home education are different legal and practical routes. They should not be blurred together.

Some EOTAS provision is necessary and appropriate. Some families freely choose home education and provide a suitable education.

But rising numbers in both areas raise a shared question:

Why are more children and young people being educated outside ordinary school routes, and what proportion of that movement reflects genuine choice rather than breakdown?

That question matters because families often do not experience these decisions as neat categories. They experience a child becoming unable to attend, support not arriving early enough, pressure building, and options narrowing.

We have written before about how ALN support can arrive only after crisis, when earlier warning signs were already visible to families. That pattern is exactly what a person-centred system should be designed to prevent.

Inclusion is not the same as being left without access

Inclusion cannot mean keeping a child nominally attached to a mainstream setting while they are unable to attend, unable to learn, or unable to cope.

Nor can it mean leaving a young person without a realistic route through school or further education while adults argue about thresholds, placements, paperwork or responsibility.

If a child or young person becomes unable to access school or FE college, the impact is not only educational. It can be devastating for their mental health.

Young people who lose access to education may become isolated from their peers. They may internalise the experience as personal failure, even where the real issue is unmet need, unsuitable provision, delayed support or poor system navigation.

Some young people we have spoken to describe feeling “less than”.

That phrase should worry us.

This is not presented as a formal research finding. It is a warning signal from lived experience, and it should be taken seriously.

Once those feelings become entrenched, the harm can extend far beyond the original education problem. A child or young person may begin with unmet ALN, sensory distress, anxiety, burnout, communication needs, trauma, disability-related barriers, Long Covid, post-viral illness or an unsuitable placement. But if the response is delay, exclusion, reduced access or drift, they can then develop secondary mental health difficulties layered on top of the original unmet need.

That is not inclusion.

That is system failure becoming internalised by the child.

A genuinely inclusive system should not simply ask whether a learner is technically on a roll, has a plan, or has been discussed in meetings. It should ask whether they can actually access education in a way that protects their dignity, mental health, belonging and future progression.

Elective home education is also rising

The same Welsh Government release records 7,176 children known to be electively home educated in Wales in 2024/25. The rate of elective home education has increased from 1.6 per 1,000 pupils in 2009/10 to 15.3 per 1,000 pupils in 2024/25 [1].

The most common age for home educated pupils was 15 [1].

That matters because 15 sits just before the end of compulsory school age. The next section looks at why that point can become a cliff edge.

The cliff edge at 15 and 16

We know from the Welsh Government data that 15 is the most common age for children known to be electively home educated in Wales [1].

Fifteen is not a random age. It is the point just before the end of compulsory school age, when GCSE pressure, ALN support, attendance pressure, EOTAS decisions, college transition and family exhaustion can all collide.

What we do not yet know clearly enough is what happens next.

How many of those 15-year-olds are able to return to education?

How many move successfully into further education?

How many are able to access Level 2 courses?

How many become stuck without the qualifications needed to progress?

How many drift out of education, training or work entirely?

This matters because once a young person reaches 16, the system changes.

In Wales, compulsory education ends at 16. Post-16 education is not the same as school-age entitlement. That means the transition from Year 11 into further education, training or other post-16 provision can become a cliff edge for young people whose school placement has already broken down.

It is also rarely just an education transition.

Between 16 and 25, different systems may change responsibility at different ages. NHS services, social care, DWP benefits, education transport, youth support, third-sector provision and further or higher education all operate with different thresholds, pathways and handover points.

These systems are often discussed separately, but they interact directly with whether a young person can access education.

For example, a young person may need an occupational therapy assessment before the right laptop, seating, software or assistive technology can be identified. Without that assessment, the education provider may not have the information needed to put the right access arrangements in place. Without the right technology, the young person may not be able to participate in learning. What looks like an “education” problem may therefore actually sit across health, equipment, transport, funding and digital access.

This is why post-16 navigation matters. Families are not navigating one service. They are navigating several systems at once, each with its own rules, evidence requirements and timescales.

For a young person who leaves school without any Level 2 qualifications, the route back can be very difficult. Colleges and post-16 providers operate within entry requirements, course thresholds, funding rules, capacity limits and performance measures. A young person who has already experienced school breakdown may then be expected to prove readiness for a system they were never properly supported to reach.

That is not a small problem.

It means educational breakdown at 15 can become a long-term progression problem at 16, 17, 18 and beyond.

It also exposes a weakness in the way success is measured. A child may disappear from school statistics, become home educated, or move into an uncertain post-16 position, but that does not tell us whether they have regained meaningful access to education, training or progression.

We have written before about the post-16 pathway in Wales, because this is often where families realise that school-age processes, FE systems, NHS pathways, social care, benefits, transport, third-sector support and adult services do not join up cleanly.

There is also a wider legal and policy question. Wales has a statutory ALN framework and children and young people with ALN have a right to an IDP. But Wales does not operate the same statutory assessment-request model that many families recognise from the SEND system in England. In Wales, the route is framed around a duty on the school, college or local authority to decide whether a child or young person has ALN, using the statutory two-stage test, and then to prepare and maintain an IDP where ALN is identified. A parent, child, young person or professional can raise a concern or request that potential ALN is considered, and decisions can be challenged or reconsidered, but families may still experience this as a confusing navigation route when a child is already falling out of education [3], [4].

If a child is already losing access, parents need to know who is responsible for identifying need, what evidence will be considered, what support must follow, what happens if the answer is no, and how quickly decisions must be made. If that is not clear before the young person reaches the 16+ transition point, then the system may already have allowed the practical route back into education to narrow.

A person-centred system should not allow that to happen quietly.

It should be asking:

Are 15-year-olds leaving school because education has become inaccessible?

Are they able to return?

Are they able to enter FE?

Are they able to access Level 2 qualifications?

Are they progressing to Level 3 and beyond?

Or are they being lost at the exact point where the system should be building a bridge?

This is why the 16 to 25 journey matters so much. The issue is not just whether a child had a plan at school. The issue is whether that plan protected a real route into education, training, work, independence and adult life.

What happened?

This data does not prove, on its own, that the ALN reforms caused the rise in out-of-school education.

There are other factors: COVID aftermath, Long Covid and post-viral illness, attendance pressures, mental health, exclusion risk, school capacity, inconsistent local implementation, data changes, poverty, and wider social pressures.

Long Covid is particularly important to mention. Some children and young people may now be educated other than at school because of health needs that would not have existed, or would not have existed at the same scale, before the pandemic. For those learners, EOTAS may be an appropriate response to changed health circumstances.

But that does not remove the wider question. If more children are outside ordinary school routes, Wales still needs to understand why, whether their provision is suitable, and whether they are able to remain connected to education, peers, qualifications and progression.

This concern is not only coming from parent experience. Audit Wales has also raised serious questions about whether public bodies understand ALN demand, costs and outcomes, and whether the system is delivering for learners. We explored that report in our article, Audit Wales says the ALN system is under strain. Families in Wales will not be surprised.

The Audit Wales report is important because it says the new ALN system was intended to create a more integrated, collaborative and person-centred system, but also found that public bodies do not have a complete picture of demand, costs and outcomes needed for planning, budgeting and assessing value for money [2].

So the question is not simply whether reform was well-intentioned. It is whether implementation is protecting access to education in practice.

The figures justify a serious implementation question:

Has implementation of the ALN reforms made education more accessible in practice for the children and young people most at risk of falling out of the system?

If more children with ALN are ending up outside school, if more families are turning to home education, and if parent carers are being forced out of the workforce because their children cannot access suitable education, then families are entitled to ask whether the system has become more person-centred in reality, or only more person-centred on paper.

Parent carers are part of the evidence too

When education breaks down, the cost does not stay inside the education system.

It moves into households.

Parent carers reduce hours, leave jobs, lose income, fight processes, coordinate appointments, chase professionals, manage crisis at home, and try to keep their children safe.

This is not a side issue. It is part of the evidence that the system is not working as intended.

If children and young people are not being heard at the right level, and parent carers are carrying the practical burden of system failure, then the word “person-centred” needs to be tested against reality.

A system cannot say it has centred the child while leaving the family to absorb the consequences of lost education.

This is also why we have written about disabled young people being left without meaningful routes into work or progression. In Breaking the Cycle for Disabled Young People, we looked at how easily young people can be left cycling around systems without moving towards the kind of future they recognise as meaningful.

Person-centred language is not enough

A plan is not an outcome.

A meeting is not an education.

A process is not support.

For families, the question is not whether the correct terminology has been used. The question is whether the child is learning, supported, safe, understood and able to progress.

If a child is out of education, on a reduced timetable, waiting for provision, pushed towards elective home education, or unable to access a suitable placement, then person-centred language offers little comfort.

One of the major problems is that families are still expected to navigate a fragmented system at the point where they are least resourced to do so.

Families may need to understand school duties, local authority responsibilities, IDP processes, health input, social care thresholds, EOTAS decisions, transport rules, post-16 transition, benefits changes, complaint routes and tribunal routes.

These systems do not always join up in real time.

The child experiences one life.

The family experiences one crisis.

But the system is divided into separate processes, budgets, teams and thresholds.

That is where families get lost.

We explored this wider pattern in Why Fragmented Funding Leads to Fragmented Delivery in the ALN System. When systems do not join up, families experience the gaps directly, and data about those gaps becomes harder to see.

That is why practical navigation matters.

Not because families need another leaflet.

Because families need to know where they are, what should happen next, who is responsible, what evidence matters, what routes are available, and how to act before crisis becomes the only visible point of intervention.

Why this matters financially as well as morally

The cost of failed navigation does not disappear.

It moves.

It moves into school breakdown, formal dispute, tribunal, alternative provision, family financial pressure, parent carer unemployment, youth disengagement and long-term loss of trust.

Learning Without Limits CIC’s current cost-benefit work uses Education Tribunal for Wales cases as a conservative proxy for high-cost escalation. That is because tribunal costs are visible enough to model.

But tribunal is only one endpoint.

The wider costs of exclusion, EOTAS, post-16 disengagement, parent carer economic loss, secondary mental health harm, benefits dependency and youth alienation are much harder to track because data is fragmented across systems.

That lack of joined-up data is itself part of the problem.

The absence of a single dataset does not mean the cost is not real. It means the system is not properly tracking the pathway into crisis.

The issue becomes even sharper when we think about progression. In From Forever Volunteer to Paid Work, we argued that disabled people and parent carers need routes from contribution into recognised progression, not endless unpaid activity. The same principle applies here. Young people who lose access to education need bridges back into learning, qualifications, employment and adult life, not a quiet slide into long-term exclusion.

A better test for reform

If Wales wants to know whether ALN reform is working, it should not only ask whether the statutory framework has changed.

It should ask:

Are fewer children with ALN falling out of education?

Are families getting clear information earlier?

Are IDPs leading to practical support?

Are reduced timetables and placement breakdowns reducing?

Are children and young people staying meaningfully connected to education, peers, training and future progression?

How many young people who leave school at 15 without Level 2 qualifications are able to re-enter education or progress into FE, training or work?

Are parent carers able to stay in work where they want and need to?

Are families able to navigate the system without reaching crisis?

Are post-16 transitions becoming clearer or more fragmented?

Those are the tests that matter to families.

Conclusion

The ALN reforms may have aimed to create a more person-centred system.

But a person-centred system must be judged by the experience of the person at the centre.

If children and young people with ALN are increasingly being educated outside school, if families are turning to home education at rising rates, if parent carers are being pushed out of the workforce, and if the practical route through the system remains unclear, then Wales needs to ask whether reform has delivered what families were promised.

The problem is not simply the absence of policy. Wales has policy. Wales has statutory language. Wales has person-centred principles.

The problem is the absence of practical navigation between policy and real life.

If children cannot access education, if parent carers are forced out of work, and if young people internalise system failure as personal failure, then reform has not yet delivered what matters most.

Learning Without Limits CIC exists to help fill that gap.

References

[1] Welsh Government, “Pupils educated other than at school: September 2024 to August 2025,” GOV.WALES, 26 Aug. 2025. [Online]. Available: https://www.gov.wales/pupils-educated-other-school-september-2024-august-2025-html

[2] Audit Wales, “Additional learning needs support system under strain,” Audit Wales, Apr. 2026. [Online]. Available: https://www.audit.wales/news/additional-learning-needs-support-system-under-strain

[3] Welsh Government, “A guide for parents about rights under the additional learning needs (ALN) system,” GOV.WALES, 12 Oct. 2022. [Online]. Available: https://www.gov.wales/guide-parents-about-rights-under-additional-learning-needs-aln-system-html

[4] Welsh Government, “Additional learning needs (ALN): decision-making and communication,” GOV.WALES, 27 Mar. 2026. [Online]. Available: https://www.gov.wales/additional-learning-needs-aln-decision-making-and-communication-html