SEND parents need support now

Posted on July 8, 2025 by John Howson

I have written three posts about SEND since I restarted this blog in May, on the override; EOTAs and more generally. As a result, I was going to sit out the present debate about what might happen in the autumn without making any further comments. However, I thought this paragraph by John Crace in the Guardian was the best summary I had seen about where we are one year into this government. Labour picks on kids as Farage reaches for his human punchbag

‘Now, Send is not perfect. The bill is getting bigger by the year, thanks both to better diagnosis and to some parents gaming the system. But it is essential for many children who benefit from education, health and care plans, and parents are worried sick they might lose out. In the absence of any clear direction from the Department for Education, many disability campaigners are fearing the worst. That children will be treated as cost centres to be downsized. That children diagnosed in the future won’t be entitled to the same benefits as children with the same level of disability are now. This one will now run and run well into the autumn.’

It is going to be a worrying summer for many parents, and that isn’t fair on them. I am all for looking at how the system is being gamed – see my blog about EOTAS – in some ways by a few parents, but most parents are genuinely worried. SEND is the only issue I ever saw a parent cry in a cabinet meeting when trying to prevent a reduction in the spending on transport. These parents have a heavy burden of love to bear, and the State should remember that.

However, the elephant in the room, and one John Crace doesn’t mention is the NHS. Afterall EHCPs replaced Statements of SEN Need. One big difference was the addition of the letter ‘H’ for health. So far, all the attention has been on local authorities, and the NHS rarely receives a mention.

Now I think that as soon as it is obvious that a child will need an EHCP, the NHS, whether maternity unit or GP surgery, should always start the process. It should not be left to a primary school headteacher to so often have to begin the process of applying for the EHCP.

At the same time, the NHS might want to look at early screening for conditions affecting early learning, and put in place a much stronger programme than at present.

SEND is also an area of life where we need to be clear about what we want from the Early Years Sector. The sector has a part to play in early identification of issues in learning, and surely staff need better training to both observe and report these early learning issues. Much has been taken about the transfer from primary to secondary school, but hardly anything about the knowledge transfer into the school system from early years. Of course, where the school has a nursery class, transfer should be straightforward. But what of other children, and especially those that spend most of their early years in the care of relatives or live in isolated in rural areas?

The government seems to like leaks, so how about some positive leaks around SEND? The government must not go on holiday leaving these parents to suffer over the summer.

Reform of Home to School Transport needed

Posted on July 4, 2025 by John Howson

This week the Local Government Association published an important report into home to school transport The future of Home to School Transport: Report | Local Government Association This is an area of responsibility that always concerned me when I was a county councillor, as the rules of the governing eligibility were set in the 1944 Education Act, in a very different era to that of today.

As the LGA report noted:

“Effective home to school transport plays a vital role in our education system. Fundamentally, it is the safety-net that ensures no child or young person misses out on their entitlement to education because they cannot otherwise get to school. However, current home to transport duties were designed for a different age, societally, educationally and economically. For local government, continuing to fulfil the current statutory responsibilities for home to school transport is becoming increasingly financially unsustainable, posing a real threat of bankruptcy for some, and necessitating cuts to other vital aspects of children’s services provision in many more.”

Much of the report deals with SEND transport, as that costs local authorities the most money, the issue of whether the NHS should bear part of the cost. Sensibly the report concluded that this was a national issue:

“We would recommend that, in the context of budgetary pressures across public services and with health being under no less pressure than local government, this is not an issue that can be left to local negotiation to resolve. The Department for Education and the Department for Health and Social Care should clarify an equitable split of responsibilities, including financial responsibilities, for transport for children with the most common health needs that require substantial and additional support, and set that out in statutory guidance both for local authorities and ICBs.”

With the review of the NHS currently underway, this seems like a timely recommendation.

Surprisingly, the report seems in places to assume that parents must send their child to a state school, rather that state schools being the default position if a parent doesn’t make any other arrangement for their child’s education. Fortunately, this assumption doesn’t affect their arguments.

I think their conclusions are sensible in both being clearer, with less change of challenge than at present, but the authors appear to have missed the opportunity to discuss how to deal with the issue of selective schools and distance. Making such schools ineligible for home to school transport as they are regarded as a parental choice is as discriminatory as any other criteria. It is a pity this wasn’t addressed more fully.

Nevertheless, I think I can agree with their conclusions for a system that:

“In summary, we are advocating that in future children and young people should be eligible for assistance with home to school travel from the start of reception to the end of year 13, based on a simple binary distance criterion: if they live more than 3 miles away (by the most direct road route) from their nearest suitable school then they would be eligible for transport assistance; if they live less than three miles away then they would not be eligible for transport assistance. This formulation of eligibility would get rid of the current link between eligibility and the ability to walk to school for both children and young people with SEND and those accessing mainstream home to school transport.”

150 year-old Committee system to be abolished

Posted on June 27, 2025 by John Howson

Earlier this week the government announced the end to Council Committees as a decision-making process within local government, requiring all councils to move to a Leader and Cabinet model. Fortunately, scrutiny committees will still be permitted. Written statements – Written questions, answers and statements – UK Parliament

So, it will be a Labour government that will finally ends the governance of state education by Committee. For over a century, the Education Committee, comprised of councillors and other persons, usually representing the main faith groups with schools in the area and ‘persons with experience in education’ was the mainstay of policy-making for the nation’s state schools, and up to the early 1990s further and public sector higher education as well.

Indeed, my first appointment to a Council was to the Education Committee, as one of the persons of experience. In that role, I was appointed to Oxfordshire’s Education Committee, and one of its sub-committees in the 1990s. I served until the County moved to a Leader and Cabinet model at the end of the decade. Some 20 years after that original appointment, I became the Cabinet Member covering the education portfolio in the same county.

This move to ban committees is a curious one at the present time when so many councils do not have a majority for one Party, and are run by coalitions. Managing coalitions in the cabinet system makes it harder for each Party to have an input into all portfolios, except at the level of cabinet. I suspect it has made cabinet meetings longer when there are differences between the Parties within the Cabinet. The alternative is that difficult decisions are dropped, rather than dealt with.

The cabinet model is also bad news for back bench councillors, especially where there is a large majority for one Party, because other than the scrutiny function, where they may sit as the occasional substitute, they will have little or no formal role in decision-making. The committee system did allow greater participation from councillors, even if it was slower at reaching decisions.

My guess is that even when formal committees are banned, unofficial groups will still be formed to help cabinet members. They may be Cabinet Committees; task and finish groups for particular projects or even unofficial committees such as the Corporate Parenting Panel of councillors from all Parties that was revived during my time as cabinet member.

The real tragedy of this move is that it represents a further nail in the coffin or local democracy. Committees meet in public for the most part, and that means there can be public input before a decision is made. The risk now is that decisions may be scrutinised after they have been made, but less so before being agreed.

One solution is to ensure that there is widespread consultation before decisions are made, as has just taken place in Oxfordshire on whether or not to charge for SEND transport for the 16-19 age group.

Councils are businesses, but not companies. How they manage decision-making with their democratic responsibilities is no matter to be taken lightly. But a time of political turmoil is an odd time to mandate that only one system of governance is possible.

Solve the High Needs Block statutory override issue now

Posted on June 16, 2025 by John Howson

June is the time of year when local authority Directors of Finance start thinking about the budget for the following April. HM Treasury is doing the same thing for the government but, with a Spending Review just announced, their task this summer should be much easier than usual as Ministers have already negotiated with the Chancellor. Directors of Finance have no such protection and are bound to produce a balanced budget for councillors to approve or face the prospect of having to issue a s114 notice and default, as some councils have already had to do in recent years.

It was very surprising not to see an announcement in the recent Spending Review about the statutory override many upper tier councils are carrying on their balance sheets,

The statutory override on council balance sheets is a result of overspends on council’s High Needs Block spending that finances the pupils and young adults with special educational needs in their local area. (SEND)

There are suggestions that a significant number of upper tier authorities with be unable to present a balanced budget for 2026/27 to councillors next February for approval unless something is done about the present statutory override that currently ends in March 2026. If nothing else is put in place, some councils will not be able to present a balanced budget and hence will default.

The simple answer would be to extend the override until March 2027 to see what the White Paper on SEND, now promised for the autumn, will bring. That move just buys time for a longer-term solution.

I wonder whether the DfE thought local government re-organisation might be a way of dealing with the deficit when new councils were being formed. After the results of May’s elections, I cannot see the present government wanting to push ahead with reorganising councils and creating new elected Mayors if such a move were to hand more victories to their opponents, and notably to the Reform Party. If reorganisation grinds to a halt that route out is no longer available for solving the issue of the override.

Another alternative is to switch the 2% precept on Council Tax from adult social services to SEND and let the NHS take the strain on funding for the mostly elderly residents currently being paid for out of the local government funding 2% precept. Such a move would not be popular but could be possible. As it wasn’t in the Spending Review it seems unlikely.

The DfE could rearrange their spending and transfer the consequences of falling pupil numbers from the Schools Block to increase the High Needs Block and do the same for the Early Years funding to keep it constant on a per child basis but recognise fewer children means less total spending. Such a move would affect funding for schools and early years setting with falling rolls.

Do nothing and councillors in Parties running councils will return from their summer breaks to be confronted with a list of serious reductions in services and personnel that might be needed in 2026. Such reductions won’t be efficiency gains, but unacceptable cuts on the level of a fire sale.

Solving the problem of the statutory override between now and the parliamentary recess for the summer should be the number one priority for all involved with education and local government. Not to do so would have consequences that are unthinkable.

The situation regarding the statutory override should not have reached the present position. In my view, it would be a gigantic failure of political will if it is not solved now.

Mixed messages on teacher retention in latest data

Posted on June 10, 2025 by John Howson

How long do teachers stay in service? The DfE comment in their analysis of the latest data that Retention rates for teachers increased for both the newest teacher cohort who qualified in 2023 and for second year retention for those who qualified in 2022, while decreasing for most earlier cohorts compared to the equivalent measure last year.

Now after a period where retention rates have been declining that’s good news, and with the worsening general labour market and an older teacher workforce than in recent years, I expect retention rates to continue to improve over the next few years.

However, the improvement is something of a mixed blessing. Teachers with longer service tend to cost more, and if schools are funded for average salary costs, more schools will find the pay bill higher than the funding, especially as pupil numbers drop.

At the same time, higher retention rates mean fewer vacancies as rolls fall unless schools receive real increases in their funding that allows additional teachers to be recruited (the Spending Review will answer that question).

If past history is anything to go by, then different regions of the country will be affected differently. My guess is that retention rates will be lower in London and the Home Counties, and higher the further north and west you travel across England. This improvement in retention rates is bad news for job hunters, and also bad news for recruitment agencies that make their profits from schools advertising vacancies unless schools’ resort to only offering one-year contracts that are not then renewed.

Any reduction in job opportunities may also be bad news for teachers trying to return to work in the United Kingdom from abroad. Add in the decline in the number of pupils in private schools, some 11,000 in the latest data, when compared with the previous year’s data, and that might be somewhere around 750 less jobs in that sector in one year.

Although retention is better for the first two years of service in the latest data from the DfE, rates still have some way to go to return to levels of twenty years ago.

% in service after each year of service	2003 entrants	Latest	Difference
1	91	89.7	-1.3
2	85	80.5	-4.5
3	81	73.2	-7.8
4	78	70.2	-7.8
5	76	67.6	-8.4
6	75	64.6	-10.4
7	73	62.5	-10.5
8	70	60.6	-9.4
9	68	59.2	-8.8
10	66	57	-9

The table compares the latest data with the 2003 entry cohort survival rates for their first ten years of service. So, 66% of the 2003 cohort were still in teaching after ten years, but only 57% of the 2014 cohort were still in teaching after ten years.

The table shows an alarming difference for teachers with six to seven years of service, the group that might be expected to be taking on middle leadership positions. Hopefully, the new pay rise will be a further incentive to persuade teachers to to quit. Knowing why they do quit, and where they go, is some other data the DfE might wish to share with everyone.

6,500 more teachers: is Labour’s pledge dead in the water?

Posted on June 9, 2025 by John Howson

Last week, I wrote the following in this blog:

“The Spending Review also needs to come clean on what the pledge around the 6,500 extra teachers means, and how they will be paid for? The IFS makes the point that the college sector needs more than 6,500 extra lecturers to cope with the fact that rolls there won’t be falling over the next few years, and any added working in adult learning will put up the demand for lecturers even more. Switching funds to the college sector solves the issue of how to pay for these extra staff, but will leave the secondary sector with a pupil-teacher ratio in many areas little different to what it was 50 years ago. Hard times for schools ahead?” More thoughts on funding schools, ahead of the spending Review | John Howson

Will, we will know if it is hard times, status quo going forward or genuinely more cash for the school’s sector on Wednesday, when the waiting and teasing will finally be over.

However, there appears to be news about the pledge to create an additional 6,500 teachers that formed part of Labour’s 2024 general election campaign. Labour said that they would:

Enable school staff to help our children to succeed

With over 6,500 more teachers in schools
All new teachers to be qualified
A new national voice for school support staff
A Teacher Training Entitlement for all our teachers
Everyone in our schools treated with the respect they deserve. Labour’s plan for schools – The Labour Party

According to the tes, and other sources, the pledge of 6,500 more teachers is dead in the water. Labour ‘abandons’ manifesto pledge to hire more teachers This follows the publication of the annual workforce data by the DfE showing that unsurprisingly showed that with falling rolls, the number of teachers in the primary school sector actual fell between November 2023 and November 2024. The primary school total of teachers dropped by about 2,900, while the number of secondary and special school teachers, as well as those working in pupil referral units, went up by about 2,350.

Now, Labour can argue that the November 2024 data was based upon the funding of schools under the previous Conservative government, and they would be correct. However, it would make the pledge even harder to achieve if it was assumed that the 6,500 additional teachers were to be added to the November 2023 total that was the latest figure at the time of the general election.

Creating more than 7,000 additional teaching posts was just never going to happen, especially as the Institute for Fiscal Studies has pointed out that there is a staffing crisis in the further education sector, and that’s where funding for any addiitonal staffing probably ought to be directed first.

Will Labour pull a rabbit out of the hat between now and Wednesday, after all it was VAT on private schools that was supposed to be used as hypothecated cash to fund the extra staff. We shall see what is announced.

And what of the other pledges? Will there be a new national voice for support staff already being told that they are less valuable that teachers by being awarded a lower pay increase: bad news for the beleaguered special school sector.

A broken system: not just mismanagement

Posted on June 8, 2025 by John Howson

When searching the DfE website this morning for the latest numbers about schools and pupils to allow me to compare the number of teachers per school for different subjects, I was distracted into looking at the number of ‘open notices’ from the DfE to Councils across England. Currently they total around 30 such notices and there are others that have been closed in recent times. These notices refer to the provision of either special needs (SEND) or children’s social services.

There really must be something wrong with a system where nearly 20%, or one in five, of all upper tier local authorities have such notices that are issued to councils for ‘poor’ or ‘inadequate’ performance. I had expected the majority of such notices to be for SEND services, but in fact half are for Children’s Social Services. This raises the question of whether in some authorities, and especially smaller unitary authorities, there is the funding to cope with both SEND and Children’s Social Services?

Of the local authorities with ‘open’ improvement notices for children’s social services, most are small metropolitan districts of unitary authorities.: Liverpool, Nottingham City and the counties of Herefordshire and Worcestershire are the exceptions. The pattern for SEND notices is different, with six counties, four metropolitan districts, four unitary councils and one London borough with ‘open notices.

What is striking about both lists is the geographical split. The relative absence from the list of well-funded London boroughs – only three appear, and only one in the SEND list, compared with eight metropolitan districts really is worthy of note and discussion. Comparing the distribution with my recent report on pupil teacher ratios does suggest that funding, or the lack of it, may play a part.

If the 16 other authorities with closed notices since 2020 are added to those with ‘open’ notices, then almost a third of all local authorities have been on the ‘naughty step’ with the DfE and Care Quality commission so far in this decade.

If that percentage and the split between types of authorities doesn’t raise questions about why and why some authorities are more likely to be faced with improvement notices than others, then I think we have a serious lack of inquiry.

The relationship between the size of an authority and competence to deliver high quality services is important, both because of the Reform Party’s pledge to cut out waste, and the Labour government’s intention to reform local government. Both need to be seen in light of this list. Is bigger better, or is local government outside London just not well-enough funded

Of course, I must declare a personal interest, since I look over as Cabinet Member for Children’s Service (excluding SEND) after Oxfordshire received a ‘notice’ in the autumn of 2023 about the quality of its SEND provision.

To some extent with SEND, authorities are at the mercy of the NHS, over which they have little power, and that relationship with SEND needs to be investigated thoroughly. Penalizing democratically elected local government for the failing of a nationally run NHS is neither fair not equitable. That the government’s funding of the High Needs Block may add to local government’s problems also needs to be taken into account. Oxfordshire is in the bottom 30% for SEND funding.

John Howson

Education and the numbers that affect what happens

Category Archives: local government