Tag Archives: DfE

Is PE now a shortage subject?

Posted on by
Reply

What a silly question. Everyone knows that there is an over-supply of trained PE teachers entering the labour market for teachers each year. This blog has said so often enough in the past. In previous years, the combination of over-recruitment onto training courses and a consistent level of demand has always meant that by the end of a calendar year there were always more PE teachers looking for jobs than posts available.

In 2022, the situation is slightly different. Yes, recruitment in Autumn 2021 onto ITT courses remained healthy, but the surge in vacancies for teachers recorded across the board during 2022 has swept PE along with the tide.

Using the index TeachVac developed in 2015, and has used since, to measure demand against the known level of supply, 2022 has seen the index for PE teachers turn negative for the first time ever this autumn.  (The dataset is at the foot of this post). The current index produced a figure of -135 on Friday 11th November 2022. This compares with a figure of -2273 for design and technology teachers, so it is still of a different order of magnitude but is in negative territory for the first time since I started recording the index.

At this level, the index points to regional shortages rather than a universal issue recruiting PE teacher across the whole of England. There are parts of the country where any late vacancy for a PE teacher for January 2023 can be filled easily. But there are other areas, notably those some distance from providers of training where schools would likely need to rely upon returners or switching their timetable around to cover unexpected vacancies.

Schools with contracts with recruitment agencies might like to check, as I assume they do on a regular basis anyway, how many PE teachers the agency has on its books. Schools should never wait to ask when they need a vacancy filled but should be aware of which agency can supply the best range of teachers to fill unanticipated vacancies. This is, perhaps, an area of recruitment where there is room for some more sophistication on the part of schools and MATs.

So, why the mini recruitment crisis in PE? Perhaps the rising school population plays a part, as does possible departures form the profession as the range of other possible jobs, from personal trainer, to working in leisure centres or teaching overseas has increased. Schools might also have seen PE teachers are useful support for their science and other departments where recruitment has been a challenge for some time now. The use of PE teachers across other curriculum subjects provides a reservoir of talent but can pose an issue for a school with a in-year vacancy if external recruitment does prove challenging.

If this week’s NAHT survey is anything to go by, this will be a short-lived problem as schools see funding decline and staffing number reduced. We shall see what Wednesday’s Autumn Statement brings for schools: good news may be in short supply.

Date20152016201720182019202020212022
07/01/2022114911209559811164121914981455
14/01/2022114411089439701148119914881427
21/01/2022114411009309581130117414741395
28/01/2022114110939169451107114814581360
04/02/2022112410829049311082112114401339
11/02/2022111810718919141062109014201298
18/02/2022111710668819021040104914071267
25/02/2022111710538678921026102913901241
04/03/2022110510348508811009100413671194
11/03/20221098101783085198496713411152
18/03/2022108899981084296491713221102
25/03/2022107997879782592789112971056
01/04/2022107196878180289787412651002
08/04/202210719597687858598501251952
15/04/202210579397577728388341237926
22/04/202210399147447388228251208899
29/04/202210218917136907978001161829
06/05/202210048766866517407671119737
13/05/20229938576526086837381073633
20/05/20229868346275616357051030553
27/05/2022979817605528590684998480
03/06/2022962808590521569677978447
10/06/2022945790568484532659952374
17/06/2022938772546469501646930315
24/06/2022930765537455481637914271
01/07/2022922761530447466628901232
08/07/2022917756524435454621893208
15/07/2022915748519425443616886195
22/07/2022915745517420440612884183
29/07/2022915745513418438610882177
05/08/2022915743510416437609879175
12/08/2022915741506416436609877171
19/08/2022915741506415435606875166
26/08/2022915741503412433605871161
02/09/2022915738501411432604868152
09/09/2022913736497406425601857132
16/09/2022903731489400409592842107
23/09/202289772748238539558482479
30/09/202289071647037437257080542
07/10/20228827104613553475577856
14/10/2022873704452350325545763-30
21/10/2022864699441337304530744-62
28/10/2022862692435334291517736-76
04/11/2022858683430326284512715-105
11/11/2022852674421314267501690-135
18/11/2022847662409295252486668
25/11/2022842652402292239477648
02/12/2022840647395280222462633
09/12/2022833642388273207452618
16/12/2022828632384262196447599
23/12/2022825626378253183436
30/12/2022

Middle Leaders: Hard to Find. Part 3 – What matters?

Posted on by
Reply

This is the final blog post in the series of three posts about re-advertised TLR level vacancies in geography recorded by TeachVac at http://www.teachvac.co.uk. In this post some of the evidence about school outcomes and the need to re-advertise are considered.

The number of schools in the sample is 80 for this exercise. The number is lower than in the previous posts for two reasons. There are a small number of independent schools in the sample and also a number of new schools. Both groups do not have data on Attainment.

Although there are discussions about the utility of the DfE’s Attainment 8 measure, this measure in its provisional outcome state for 2022 was used to classify the schools.

Of the 80 school, 24 had an Attainment 8 score better than that of the score for their local authority as a whole. This meant that 56 schools with re-advertised posts were below the average for their local authority as a whole.

Of the 24 schools that scored better than their LA average for all schools, eight were located in London; three in the South East and two in the East of England. Thus, 13 of the 24 might be seen as schools in London and the Home Counties where house prices might restrict the ability of teachers to move into a particular area.

Not only did the schools re-advertising perform worse in Attainment 8 than local schools, but in the case of 41 of the 80 schools they were also below the average for all schools in England.

Another characteristic of the schools re-advertising was that in 53 out of the 80 cases, the school re-advertising had a percentage of pupils on Free School Meals at some point in the last six years that was above the national average for England, in some cases markedly so.

Of course, other factors, such as the time of year of the initial advertisements may make a difference in terms of the need to re-advertise, but many of the schools in the sample experienced more than one round of re-advertisements for their TLR vacancy.

Another interesting feature is the presence of six schools from one large Multi-Academy Trust in the sample of 80 schools and three from another large MAT. Is their presence just a matter of the size of the MAT? Perhaps, in some cases, they have taken on schools in challenging circumstances that might seem less attractive places in which to work. Some of the schools are in parts of London with high housing costs, and that may be another issue.

Some years ago, during the coalition government there was a trial scheme designed to place middle leaders in schools finding recruitment a challenge. For some reason, Yorkshire and Lancashire authorities were selected for the trial. At the time the choice of area seemed odd to me. As it was, for several reasons, the scheme never progressed beyond the trial stage, although various potential bidders did contact me about participating in possible bids.

The data for this study came from TeachVac. Schools can have access to TeachVac’s data and analysis by signing up to the vacancy matching service. The basis cost is just £1 per vacancy match made with a teacher with a maximum cost of £500 per year. Schools should go to www.teachvac.co.uk to sign up and see whether there are any special offers either for groups or for different types of school.

Catch Up a good idea, but where to find the staff?

Posted on by
1

The DfE has released a research report into Year 2 of the National Tutoring Programme. National Tutoring Programme year 2: implementation and process evaluation – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) What struck me about the report by NfER was the issue of where tutors came from and the impact of the programme on the overall workforce available to teach our children.

The Report comments that:

“The availability and quality of external tutors and mentors is fundamental – not all schools have the capacity to use internal staff as tutors Evidently, some schools want and need to rely on external tutors. It is encouraging that two-thirds of senior leaders were confident that their school could access high-quality tutoring when needed. However, a fifth were uncertain and a notable minority were unconfident. Only two-fifths were more confident than before the pandemic, which is disappointing given the Government’s focus on tutoring as a response to Covid-19 recovery.”

The Report also concludes that:

“The clear message from the research summarised earlier in the report is that tutors should be knowledgeable in their subject area and trained in pedagogy for tutoring to be effective. The findings emphasise the importance of the roles of the NTP contractors in 2022-23, who will be responsible for recruitment of tutors and mentors, providing them with training, and quality assurance.”

Both of these factors will no doubt contribute to the finding that the programme added to the workload of senior staff in schools, as would any new programme, and that those extra burdens need to be financed to prevent staff having to cope with extra pressures. The Report comments that “It will be important to monitor and review whether this increase in workload continues as the NTP becomes more embedded and as schools are given more autonomy over the delivery of tutoring.”

From my perspective, it is also important to know more about where the staff involved in the programme came from, and if tutoring is going to become a long-term feature of the school scene what will be the effects on the ability of schools to staff their core offering of teaching and learning. How will the programme interface with any actions on the levelling up agenda the new Ministerial Team at the DfE might pursue.

Does the return of Mr Gibb to a ministerial role in the DfE mean more phonics and the EBacc and less concern with vocational subjects? Faced with the prospect of cuts to departmental spending, will the programme be judged sufficiently successful to survive or just allowed to be something schools might wish to pay for from their own budgets?

The National Tutoring Programme should fill an important gap in the provision by providing schools with the ability to help pupils that miss elements of schools catch-up with their peers and help put their own learning back on track. However, the relationship between the programme, and particularly the secondary school sector, where staffing issues are more critical, may need further investigation and may perceived regional issues in supply. In the primary sector, the impact on senior staff workload may be an important consideration for the future.

Why do children in London want to go to school?

Posted on by
Reply

Last week, the DfE published some interesting data on attendance during the autumn and spring terms s of the past few years. The figures, as the DfE acknowledges, are affected by the progress of the covid pandemic. Nevertheless, it is interesting to look at the 2021/22 autumn and spring term data for overall absence as measured by local authority. The data are for upper-tier authorities, so in the remaining ‘shire counties’ it isn’t possible to drill down to district council level. Such data would be especially interesting as it would allow better comparisons between district and unitary councils and the urban borough of London and the Metropolitan areas. Pupil absence in schools in England: autumn and spring terms, Autumn and Spring Term 2021/22 – Explore education statistics – GOV.UK (explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk)

Even with out this data, the dominance of the London boroughs in the table as ranked by lowest levels of absence is very plain to see.  Only Trafford and Bracknell Forest break in to the list of the top 25 local authorities with the lowest overall absence rates for autumn 2021 and spring 2022 terms, a fact demonstrated by the regional data in the table below. Camden seems to be something of an outlier in the London data with rates for overall absence well about the average for its companion boroughs.

Absence rates by region, autumn and spring terms 2021/22
 Overall absence rateRate of sessions recorded as not attending due to COVID circumstancesPercentage of persistent absentees – 10% or more sessions missed
North East7.90%1.10%24.30%
North West7.30%1.20%22.30%
Yorkshire and The Humber7.60%1.20%23.00%
East Midlands7.40%1.30%22.10%
West Midlands7.60%1.40%23.30%
East of England7.50%1.50%23.00%
South East7.40%1.60%22.20%
South West8.00%1.40%24.70%
Inner London6.30%1.30%18.70%
Outer London6.40%1.20%18.80%
Source: DfE

Inner London, has the lowest overall absence rate for the period, followed by the Outer London boroughs. The South West, a region with no real urban outside of the Bristol Region, had the worst overall absence rate, ahead of even the North East that featured in my recent post about unauthorised absences this September. Absent without leave | John Howson (wordpress.com)

The DfE’s data on overall absence covers primary, secondary and special schools and it would be interesting to see the data by sector for each local authority. Are the areas where the DfE has pupped in extra funds performing better than those with just the National Funding Formula and high Needs block to rely upon? Although above the regional average, the percentage figure for Blackpool is by no means the worst in the North West, so hopefully, the funding is making a difference.

As might be expected, the overall absence rate for the secondary sector at 9.2% in Spring Term 2021/22 was higher than in the primary sector, where it was 6.7%. Both included a 1% figure for covid related absences. In 2018/19, before the pandemic, the secondary sector recorded an overall absence rate of 5.6% and the primary sector a rate of 4.1%. Not surprisingly, it seemed easier to encourage primary school pupils back into school after the pandemic.

Ensuring pupils are back in school must be the first step on the recovery in learning, and there must be thoughts about the missing adolescents and how they can be encouraged to start learning again. Might that affect judgements about future funding, or will the government write off these young people and their learning?

Can state services save money for schools?

Posted on by
Reply

When I first started writing this blog, back in early 2013, now nearly a decade ago, one of my mistakes was not to create an index. With more than 1,300 posts later, to do so now would be a labour of love that at present I don’t have the time for. The lack of an index means I am largely dependent upon visitors throwing up links to former posts to supplement my own memory of issues such as Jacob’s Law – discussed in the previous post.

Today, I have been reminded of a post from January 2018 about costs and savings in the education system that is relevant to the present economic situation. You can read the full post at Not Full Circle? | John Howson (wordpress.com) but one key paragraph was this:

“…. I wonder whether another stage in the cycle of government contracting is starting to emerge. In the immediate post-war period of central planning, public bodies often ran most services. There was no profit element to consider, but cost controls were of variable quality. The Thatcher era saw a mass transfer of services to private companies, with an expectation that costs would fall. Maybe some did, but others didn’t and some benefitted from the proceeds of technological change that drove down costs, but didn’t create competition and didn’t always drive down prices.”

This 2018 post had built upon an even earlier one from July 2014 Private or public | John Howson (wordpress.com) that dealt with the issue, concerning even then, of the cost of outsourcing children’s services to the private sector with no control over rising costs.

At that time, I was establishing TeachVac www.teachvac. To demonstrate how costs of recruitment advertising could be reduced. I concluded the post with the comment that;

“In a time of cutbacks on government expenditure, as we have witnessed during the past six years, it is inevitable that staffing costs will come under pressure, and the debate between cutting wages or cutting services will rage. Sometimes there is a third way, and a new technology or a different approach, can achieve the same service level for lower costs. Is that what we ought to be striving for in education? The only other alternative to preserve service levels is higher taxes.”

This debate about the profit element, and where the most cost-effective system can be found, is once again a live one as the country faces a new round of coping with living beyond its means and the consequences of a foolish attempt to ‘dash for growth’ when other global factors were pointing towards the need for sound government.

How to make savings in a devolved system such as schooling in England is an interesting question. Perhaps we should start with the role of the DfE. Is it there to provide services on a ‘take it or leave it’ basis, such as their vacancy site or is it there to bring together the different players to work out the best value approach for schools. If the latter, how does it enforce such a best value approach? Perhaps the annual audit report should make a comment to governors about where a school spending exceeds a benchmark?

TeachVac is currently in the process of creating an index on recruitment showing the position that a school sits both locally and nationally. Such an index would provide evidence to show the degree high spending on recruitment was necessary and justified.  

Marking time between PMs

Posted on by
2

The current political turmoil at Westminster has led commentators and journalists to suggest that the Schools Bill is now effectively dead in the water. The Bill had been struggling ever since it was introduced into the House of Lords and then received a right mauling, such as Upper House can sometimes deliver. Even Tory members of the ‘revising chamber’ seemed unimpressed by their own government’s attempts at reform. The strongest support at that point in time seemed to come from the bench of the Lords Spiritual in the form of the Church of England Bishop with the speaking rights for their schools.  

So, while the DfE also waits to see whether kit Malthouse joins the ranks of those passing through Sanctuary buildings or will be allowed to stay on in post as Secretary of State by the next prime minster, what might civil servants do with their time if the Bill has effectively been dropped?

Personally, I would like to see the regulations for in-year admissions updated to provide more power provided for local authorities, especially with regard to children in care and those with an EHCP that move into a new area. These are some of our most vulnerable children, and the present system of opt-out by academies for in-year admissions sometimes doesn’t help their education.

I have called this a need for a Jacob’s Law to change this situation, but in reality, it doesn’t need a law, just a change in regulations and secondary legislation.

For those that want to read the history behind the need for a Jacob’s Law, see  Time for Jacob’s Law | John Howson (wordpress.com) It is now 5 years since Jacob returned to Oxfordshire and started his period of 22 months without a school accepting him on roll. We must not let this happen again.

The last two White Papers have both contained references to returning control of in-year admissions to local authorities and the government has confirmed that to do so doesn’t need primary legislation.

The loss of the Schools Bill also puts at risk the idea of a register of young people of school age. Such a list would allow movement of young people to be tracked and make it harder for children to disappear off the radar. Not impossible, because parents can take drastic action such as disappearing overseas, but at least it might help policymaker understand the extent of home schooling and encourage debate about the rights of children and their parents to education and what that term actually means in the modern age?

The 25-49 age group that contains most parents of school-age children was one of the groups least supportive of the Conservatives in the latest polling of the public, even putting the Party behind the Lib Dems nationally among this age-group! PeoplePolling / GB News Survey Results

Can something be seen as ‘too cheap’?

Posted on by
Reply

Someone told me this morning that TeachVac www.teachvac.co.uk was too cheap to work. Schools would not think that offering matches of their vacancies at £1 a throw would work because schools did not believe it could ever be delivered for such a low price. The suggestion was a price point of £5 per match.

It is an interesting matter to debate. TeachVac was established to demonstrate that matching candidates to teaching vacancies where the job matched the aspirations of teachers seeking a job need not be an expensive undertaking with modern technology. That was eight years ago.

The owners of TeachVac would be delighted to take £5 per match, but it would not be true to the original philosophy of demonstrating that modern technology can drive down prices. What such efficiency gains do for the notion of ‘growth’ is another matter entirely.

Anyway, the current £250 offer of 12 months of unlimited matches for secondary schools is proving attractive, especially now that the free service is restricted. Why should some schools pay, and other schools receive the service for free?

TeachVac are also now offering a health check on a school’s vacancy profile, identifying those vacancies that should cost relatively little to fill, and those where schools could struggle.

Here is a suggested framework for schools to consider.

RECRUITING A TEACHER – are you receiving value for money?

The no worry about the cost approach:

Take out an annual subscription to a service such as the tes; hire a recruitment agency; join several job boards

The make effective use of your expenditure:

  1. Calculate how many vacancies you have in a typical year
  2. Divide these into classroom teacher; promoted post; leadership vacancies
  3. Profile the months that the jobs have appeared throughout the year
  4. Review the subject areas
  5. Check against the ‘difficult to fill index’ by TeachVac for each vacancy and local competition
  6. Review the current strategy for value for money

For mainly easy to fill classroom teacher vacancies, especially early in the year:

Use School web site and review interested after 48 hours

If little response, consider move to a paid search procedure

For more challenging vacancies:

Use most cost-effective search procedure

For most challenging vacancies

Consider using agencies on a no-find no fee basis. May be expensive, but might cost-effective.

Calculate the overall cost of different approaches in terms of ability to fill each vacancy against current expenditure.

Absent without leave

Posted on by
1

The DfE has an experimental dashboard recording weekly pupil absence data for overall absence and authorized and unauthorized absences at the local authority level. https://department-for-education.shinyapps.io/pupil-attendance-in-schools/ So far, the dashboard has data from 14,580 schools for the 30th of September data.

I have just extracted one list from the dashboard. This is the25 local authority areas with the highest percentages of unauthorized absences in the secondary school sector.

YearWeek beginningLocal authorityAbsenceAuthorisedUnauthorised
202226/09/2022Middlesbrough11.60%4.60%7.10%
202226/09/2022Knowsley11.00%4.50%6.50%
202226/09/2022Isle of Wight11.50%5.90%5.70%
202226/09/2022Sunderland10.20%4.70%5.50%
202226/09/2022Salford9.60%4.10%5.50%
202226/09/2022Hartlepool9.40%3.90%5.40%
202226/09/2022Stoke-on-Trent9.90%4.60%5.40%
202226/09/2022Newcastle upon Tyne10.20%4.90%5.30%
202226/09/2022Gateshead10.70%5.70%5.10%
202226/09/2022Bradford9.80%4.90%4.90%
202226/09/2022Doncaster10.10%5.40%4.70%
202226/09/2022Newham7.80%3.00%4.70%
202226/09/2022Sheffield8.20%3.50%4.70%
202226/09/2022Liverpool9.80%5.30%4.50%
202226/09/2022Kingston upon Hull, City of9.50%5.10%4.30%
202226/09/2022Stockton-on-Tees8.70%4.40%4.30%
202226/09/2022Rochdale8.90%4.70%4.10%
202226/09/2022Blackpool8.70%4.60%4.10%
202226/09/2022Leeds8.40%4.30%4.10%
202226/09/2022Rotherham8.90%4.80%4.10%
202226/09/2022Calderdale9.30%5.40%3.80%
202226/09/2022Barnsley9.30%5.50%3.80%
202226/09/2022Coventry8.70%5.00%3.70%
202226/09/2022County Durham9.70%6.00%3.70%
202226/09/2022Sandwell7.30%3.60%3.60%
Absence rates by geographical area -worst 25 for the end of September 2022

What is striking is the geographical spread of authorities. None in the South West, East of England and East Midlands and only one each in London and the South East. So, from five of the nine regions of England there are just two local authority areas in the list. Whereas the North East contributes more than five authorities to the list, although only two of the five local authority areas heading up the list.

Now, it may be that schools in some areas take different views about what constitutes authorized or unauthorized absences even though there are well-defined categories. Some may also be better at recording data. However, there is another similarity with the areas in the list. Most are areas with either significant pockets or in some cases even larger areas of deprivation within the geographical area.

Some, such as Blackpool, have been Opportunity Areas under previous government schemes to support education. Seven areas had more than 10% of secondary school pupils not in school at the end of September. Such a level of absence might be understandable either later in the year or during the depth of winter, but so early in the school year it is troubling.

Many of these areas have high unemployment levels and would seem to be targets for areas of growth. However, the skills base won’t be there to develop if the education of a proportion of pupils is so disrupted.

Might the current curriculum have something to do with the decision by these pupils to stay away? Government still looks more favorably on training teachers for EBacc subjects than for more directly vocational areas such as business studies.

Interestingly, most of these areas are not ones with significant teacher recruitment issues.

When are deficits called reserves?

Posted on by
3

Local authorities are currently starting to put together their budgets for 2023/24. Upper Tier Authorities with responsibility for the High Needs block of the Direct School Gant that deals with expenditure on pupils with special needs will be looking at a year-end overspend in many cases that will need to be added to the amount already sitting off-balance sheet in a temporary solution to the problem of how to pay for this expenditure. The money has been spent by the local authority, but not paid for by central government, so it sits awkwardly in an account waiting for a solution.

At some point, if the DfE or The Treasury deems that the local authority should no longer carry the deficit, but fund it from reserves, this would be a major headache for, I suspect, many local authorities, regardless of their political control. In the present financial climate, the solution is more challenging than it might have been a year ago. As a result, I expect the government to ‘kick the can’ further down the road extending the current arrangement until March 2024, and leaving local authorities with even bigger numbers to worry about.

How might the issue be solved? Before devolved budgets came into being for schools in the 1990s, authorities might just have top sliced their education budget. I cannot see Schools Forum, the body that discusses education funding at a local authority level, agreeing to such a move these days, although the DfE could no doubt mandate it somehow.

An alternative would be to use the precept method, as has been used for social care funding, by allowing local authorities to increase Council Tax by an amount to cover the deficit they have incurred that is not on their balance sheet, but in ‘reserves’. This passes the problem to local taxpayers, despite schooling now being a centrally financed activity.

The government at Westminster could just pay off the figure authorities have in their reserves, either in one lump sum or more likely over a period of several years. But, with their demands for cuts in public expenditure to finance tax cuts, this seems an unlikely option.

Increasing pupil numbers, better healthcare and the acceptance of new medical conditions was always going to put increased demand upon a school system and its funding for pupils with special needs, and especially one that both had not always planned for the changes and was required to do more after the switch to EHCPs from Statements of Need following the 2014 Education Act. A good example of worthy legislation that doesn’t seem to have been fully costed as to its on-gong effects.

Meanwhile, parents probably see declines in service locally, as officers struggle to keep the costs of running the service within bounds. These parents often carry a heavy burden caring for their offspring and fighting a local government system is not something they want to do, but sometimes are forced to undertake. There must be a solution that puts the needs of these young people first.

Not an area for funding ‘cuts’.

Posted on by
Reply

At the end of September, the DfE published its annual look at local authority expenditure on education and children’s services. Even though the rate of conversion by maintained schools to become academies is a mere trickle these days, the data on education spending on schools is difficult to judge over time in terms of trends, except to note that these are challenging times for schools. Planned local authority and school expenditure: 2022 to 2023 financial year – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Elsewhere in the budgets of Children’s Services, it is not cuts that are uppermost in the minds of directors of these services, rather how to find the cash to fund continued growth in the need for their work.

At least the growth in the number of Looked After Children (LACs or CLA in government terminology) seems to have slowed to just a one per cent increase. According to the government release, ‘in 2022-23 planned net expenditure on CLA is £5.4 billion, a 10.4% increase from 2021-22. Expenditure on CLA consistently forms the largest proportion of LA spending on children’s and young people’s services. It represents 52.6% of this expenditure in 2022-23, slightly higher than in 2021-22 (51.1%).’ 

The notes in the government’s data release add that

‘Planned net expenditure increased across all categories for CLA, with the largest rises seen in asylum seeker children (53.0%), education of CLA (17.1%) and residential care (16.2%). The latest data published by the Home Office, shows a rise of 67.0% in the number of unaccompanied asylum seeker children applications for the year ending June 2022. Accordingly, LAs may be anticipating an increase in UASC numbers.’

Elsewhere, the releases notes that that there was a decline of £11.1 million in universal services for young people, presumably to help pay for the increase elsewhere, but that some £5 million extra was spent on targeted service for vulnerable young people.

There is no doubt some relief in the effects of the decline in the birth rate on spending on Early Years support, where fewer children in the age groups means less expenditure at a constant level of service.

The other area of concern for both central government and local authorities is the spending on Special Needs.  According to the release, ‘there were 96,000 planned SEN places (September to March) with total funding for the financial year 2022-23 of £916 million. This is an increase of 2,300 places and £20 million since 2021-22, and similar to 2018-19 figures which had the highest planned places and expenditure since 2013-14.’ With the growth in the secondary school population this figure is only set to increase further in the next few years.

After falling from around 17,500 in 2015-16, to a low of 11,300 in 2018-19, the number of places funded in Pupil Referral Units, or PRUs, once again remained above 13,000 in the latest data, with a small increase on the previous year’s number. This is an area where schools, whether academies or not can work together with local authorities to try to ensure as many young people remain in mainstream or special schools as possible and are not sent to PRUs.

Overall, these figures were collected in a period when inflation was still low. Those for next year will reflect how well Children’s Services have been able to cope with the turmoil of the past year and that of the coming winter.  

Unlike the previous post, this is not an area of public services where it is easy to areas where cuts can be made without damaging the lives of vulnerable young people.