According to experts, financial pressures indicate that many councils are reluctant to address the pressing issue of top-up funding from high-need budgets.
Students with special needs in the mainstream are increasingly being refused top-up funding from England’s councils unless legal documents support their claims.
Experts claim that increasing financial pressure has made councils reluctant to accept demands for top-up funding for high-needs budgets, creating a “vicious cycle” between councils and parents over who gets support.
Carers and parents in Buckinghamshire claim that they have been told that the local authority will only accept applications from schools to fund special education needs once the claims are approved by the Educational Health and Care Plan (EHCP).
Last year, there were 576,000 children and youngsters in England who had an EHCP, including one in 19 aged between five and 15. An EHCP is a statutory document that requires an assessment and agreement between local authorities and parents specifying the extra support funded from the council’s high-needs budget.
However, the County Councils Networks estimates revealed that an additional 1.2 million children with special educational needs might not be eligible for an EHCP and could lose funding.
Buckinghamshire’s cabinet member for education and children’s services, Anita Cranmer, said, “Buckinghamshire council continues to consider all new requests on a case-by-case basis and determine whether support can be made available. However, the use of high needs block (HNB) funding for children without an EHCP is discretionary, with many councils not funding services from the HNB unless children and young people have an EHCP.”
Cranmer stated that the current financial year had been “particularly challenging”, with a £6m overspend on Send provision. “We are committed to prevention and early intervention and working with education sector leaders to develop new ways to manage the demand pressures we have seen across the sector, including children and young people with higher support needs than we have seen previously.”
The funding crisis jeopardizes hopes that the mainstream state could admit more students with special educational needs and relieve the pressure on special schools. It also threatens the council’s budget for securing places in the private sector.
A researcher at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Luke Sibieta, stated that special needs funding systems were under severe pressure, with the 60% increase in children with an EHCP outstripping a 40% increase in real-terms funding since 2015.
Sibieta stated it was challenging for pupils without an EHCP to get support “as the costs must be effectively met from existing school budgets”, which are already overloaded. “This creates a vicious cycle where parents pay for assessments and legal costs to get their child an EHCP, and councils try whatever means necessary to contain demand and costs. And because the process costs so much time and money, there are also inequalities in who gets support.”
A special educational needs and disabilities (Send) spokesperson for the County Councils Network, Kate Foale, stated the increase in the number of EHCPs meant local authorities were budgeted to spend £12bn annually on Send support by 2026, compared with £4bn in 2015.
Foale stated: “As councils increasingly have to spend more on pupils with EHCPs, this means the amount of funding they have for other pupils who also have needs has decreased substantially.”
A Send and inclusion specialist for the Association of School and College Leaders, Margaret Mulholland, mentioned that there was clear government guidance that local authorities could provide for children and youngsters whether they have an EHCP or not.
She stated: “While we understand that some local authorities are under significant pressure, it’s deeply worrying that in some cases the delivery of Send funding appears to be dictated by financial constraints rather than what is appropriate to ensure pupils are given the support they need. There desperately needs to be action at a governmental level to ensure local authorities and schools have the funding required to meet the needs of all children and young people.”
Buckinghamshire is among the 55 local authorities participating in the Department for Education’s “delivering better value” programme. Under this programme, external consultants are examining the Send funding and outcome.
A Department of Education spokesperson stated that high-needs funding in England would reach £10.7bn this year and went on to say, “For too long, children and young people with Send have been let down by a system that is not working, but we are determined to change this.
“Urgent work is already under way to ensure more children are getting earlier and better support to thrive in education through our curriculum and assessment review, Ofsted reforms, and new early years Send training. We will continue to work as quickly as possible to ensure that every child gets the best start in life.”
