Demand for SEND places

Posted on March 20, 2026 by John Howson

Yesterday, I wrote about the forecast decline in primary and secondary school places. In the past, less attention has been paid to the need for places for pupils with SEND. However, possibly as a result of the rapid growth in EHCPs, and hence the demand for specialist provision, the DfE has started trying to forecast what it has termed ‘the Local authority pupil forecasts for ‘Local authority specialist provision for pupils’.

This exercise was always going to be something of a challenge since it is taking place against falling pupil numbers, especially in the primary sector, but increasing demand for EHCPs. However, if demand for EHCPs continues to increase, it won’t necessarily mean a demand for more special school places, because some of the increased demand is likely to be met by specialist provision within schools as ‘specialist bases’ are created, often using the spare capacity arising from falling rolls.

At present the DfE data shows that the current stock of special schools is operating at over-capacity by some 10,000 places. At the top of a demographic cycle, such pressure would not be surprising, as schools often take ‘bulge’ classes for a couple of years using temporary buildings rather than built new schools that might not be needed as rolls fall. Whether that is the correct approach in the present circumstances for the special school sector is unclear from the DfE’s data published yesterday. School capacity in England: academic year 2024 to 2025 – GOV.UK

An analysis of local authority data around provision of specialist provision for the period up to the end of the decade reveals large differences across the country in projected need. At one end of the spectrum, three local authorities are projecting grow of in excess of 1,200 places each in the primary sector. At the other end of the spectrum, twenty-four authorities are predicting a reduction in need, with one ‘Reform’ led county predicating a need for 500 fewer places. Interestingly, the adjacent unitary authority is predicting an increase of over 100 places.

Oxfordshire, whose primary and secondary place forecasts were discussed in my previous post is predicting only a very small increase in the number of primary places.

These significant differences don’t seem to be related to either the underlying pupil population or the trend in pupil numbers in the primary sector. This raises issues about how reliable the current forecasting around the demand for SEND places is for policy-makers. Accurate data are important, because of the cost of provision in the SEND sector.

Data on provision of places are also important in helping identify workforce needs. It seems odd that the DfE doesn’t seem to have a unit that brings together trends in pupil numbers and the demand for both places and people to educate the projected school population.

If the DfE did have such a unit then it might look at the costs of small sixth forms and of central overheads by different MATs. It might also look at the issue of small primary schools, and how they might be protected in rural areas, but possibly amalgamated in urban areas. Is a one-from of entry school viable in London?

Hopefully, the data published yesterday will create some debate around the important, but often overlooked, issue of pupil place planning, and the future shape of schooling in the modern age.

Schools: the end of local authority involvement?

Posted on February 22, 2026 by John Howson

When I first started studying the governance of education, way back in 1979, there at that time two popular saying about the school system in England. One was that it was, ‘a partnership between local and national governments’ and the other that it was ‘a national system locally administered.’ A typical examination question was to ask how valid either of these statements were?

That was half a century ago; difficult for me to believe, but true nevertheless. I have witnessed a lot of changes during in the intervening years. Indeed, one of my few academic articles I have published was entitled ‘Variations in local authority provision of education’ and appeared in the Oxford Review of Education way back in the early 1980s. Interestingly, during the Labour government of the period between 1974-79, closing the gap in funding between the best and worst local authorities was a matter of academic interest. Anyone wanting to know more could do worse than read’ Depriving the Deprived’, written by Tunley, Travers and Platt, published in 1979, as it is about the funding of schooling across one London borough over one year.

For a comparison over a longer time period, my review of 50 years of pupil teacher ratios, published last summer and available for download on researchgate at (PDF) PTRS OVER TIME: A REVIEW OF PUPIL TEACHER RATIOS BETWEEN 1974 AND 2024 AND TWO PERIODS OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT RE-ORGANISATION PTRS OVER TIME: A REVIEW OF PUPIL TEACHER RATIOS

During the 50 years between local government reorganisation in 1974 and 2024, school funding decisions have been removed from local authorities, and nationalised; Education Committees have been abolished, in favour of cabinet government; teacher training and new schemes to prepare teachers have been taken over by Westminster; schools have been persuaded to become academies outwith local authority control, but still under church control if faith schools – if the white Paper leaks are correct all schools will now have to become an academy or free school; further and higher education were liberated from local authority oversight and funding in the early 1990s; ultimate control over place planning has remained with the DfE as only the DfE can sanction new schools being built.

What’s left for local authorities? SEND for a couple more years; admissions- including in-year admissions once the current Bill becomes law – and transport. Frankly, I cannot see local authorities, especially newly reorgnised upper tier authorities, wanting either of these functions in the future. And why would they, as these services can often be poisoned chalices.

So, are we moving to an NHS style system for schooling in England, with little local democratic oversight, and few routes for parents to complain about the education their child is receiving. I fear so.

Does it matter? That’s a matter of opinion. The world of 2026 is vastly different to that of sixty years ago, and it should be easier to produce a more level playing field with all the levers of funding and control being exercise from Westminster.

But I remain sceptical. Westminster has been unable to control issues such as MAT chief executive’s pay and the level of school reserves. At present it isn’t equipped to be a fully functioning operational department along the lines of the NHS of MoD. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, the White Paper has to say about governance when it is published tomorrow.

White Paper: bad news for rural primary schools

Posted on February 22, 2026 by John Howson

Tomorrow, Monday, we will see Labour’s White Paper in full. For now, we have copious leaks and SEND and other matters, such as how to tackle the outcome gaps between the most deprived pupils and their more fortunate fellows either sitting alongside them or in other schools to whet our appetite.

The replacement of Free School Meals as a measure of deprivation has been long overdue, but it will be interesting see, as schooling moves from a local service to a national service, administered in a similar fashion to the NHS, whether the civil service will be any better than local politicians at managing the performance of the school system.

Making all schools academies will be the final nail in local government’s interest in schooling. Once SEND is handled nationally, it will just leave admissions, mainly on-line these days, to be removed from local management.

However, the changes already foreshadowed in the leaks mean that there will be winners and losers. Assuming that H M Treasury might fund some of the SEND changes, there is unlikely to be any new money to support schools to improve.

The present Funding Formula is heavily biased towards pupil numbers. Great when rolls are rising, but bad news for small schools when rolls fall. If the formula is altered to move more money towards schools with significant numbers of pupils not achieving expected standards, where will the cash come from?

Might small rural primary schools with good attendance and excellent results see their funding cut in real terms? If so, what are the consequences likely to be? Trusts will be reluctant to keep schools that cost more to run than they bring in through funding open, and will have no incentive to do so. Afterall, any travel costs will be paid for from the local authority under present arrangements.

I can see the local government organisations saying that if local authorities don’t run schools, then they shouldn’t have to pay any transport costs. Taking £46 million off Oxfordshire County Council’s budget would pay for an awful lot of pothole repairs, not to mention bolstering other services.

For those local authorities currently receiving little funding from central government, removing schooling entirely from local government would be an unexpected bonus. On the other hand, there would, as with the NHS, be no local democratic accountability. Education rarely features during general elections.

One bonus of a national school system is that the government might feel able to create a universal system for secondary schools, some 61 years after Circular 10/65 and on the 50^th Anniversary of the 1976 Education Act.

Without democratic oversigh,t ignoring the 2006 rules about closing small rural primary schools will be much easier. Small one form entry faith schools in urban areas with good results have even less protection. It is worth studying the results for primary schools in Haringey to see the parts of the borough that might be winners and those that might be losers if funding doesn’t increase overall.

As someone that started teaching in Tottenham in 1971, when we had ‘areas of exceptional difficulty’ payments introduced into ‘Education Priority Areas’ it is interesting to see how stark the divide between schools on opposite sides of the railway line north from Kings Cross still remains.

So, will the government close that divide? But will it be at a cost to rural primary schools in Oxfordshire, my current home?

Winners and losers

Posted on December 29, 2025 by John Howson

How have my blog posts fared since I restarted this blog in May of 2025? Some new posts were well received, some old favourites from previous years continued to attract readers, and some of this year’s posts languished unread, according to WordPress’s dashboard.

So, as of today, 29^th December 2025, what have been the most read posts for 2025 and when were they written?

How much holiday do teachers have?					645
150-year-old Committee system to be abolished					75
Too many teachers?					73
Headteacher vacancies: even in August					68
Windfall profits and SEND					58
‘Stuck’ schools – who teaches in these schools?					55
Less than 400 teachers of physics entered service in 2023/24					54
DfE wasting money on ITT					51
Labour’s determination to recruit new teachers doesn’t include music					53
The governance of our schools – does pay matter?					51

Do we need local democracy in our schooling system?

Posted on December 24, 2025 by John Howson

Should local elected politicians have a say about schooling in their local areas? An alternative to that system is the NHS model of provision, a service run by professionals and managers, with little or no local democratic involvement, other than in public health.

As someone that has been involved in politics (for the Liberal Democrats) since the 1960s, I have strong views on this topic, especially as I have spent my whole adult life working in the education sector, as a teacher, lecturer, civil servant – albeit briefly – columnist and blogger, and entrepreneur. For me, local democracy is important. For others, it seems the need for local democracy has been declining in importance over the decades.

When I was at university, local authorities ran local education; they trained and appointed the teachers – often in association with the main Christian denominations – set the level of spending on schooling, and built and ran the buildings.

After the Robbins Report into Higher Education in the 1960s, local authorities grip on education began to weaken, and central government began to take more control over decision-making about schools and how they were managed.

First, the training of teachers was removed form local authorities into higher education, so by 1992 when all public sector high education became centrally managed, local authorities no longer controlled this vital resource.

At the same time, the consequences of the 1988 Education Reform Act saw a National Curriculum introduced. Funding was devolved to schools, significantly reducing the power of Education Committees to decide local funding priorities. The Blair government then effectively abolished Education Committees, putting power over schooling in the hands of a single Cabinet member, often with only weak scrutiny of the service.

However, notionally schools were still mostly community schools, except where they were under the control of charities and the churches.

The creation of academies by the Labour government of Gordon Brown, and their subsequent enthusiastic uptake by the coalition government of 2010-15 by Michael Gove, removed almost all the remaining powers of locally elected councils over the running of schools, while allowing the churches to retain their control over voluntary aided schools that had become academies.

By the present time, most councils now have children’s services, almost always run by a social work professional, with the lead officer in charge of schools being a second or even third tier position. The national funding formula left councils with few choices to make about schools, except over poisoned chalices like SEND and home to school transport.

Councils taking children into care could not even direct academies to provide a place for the child, but on the other hand were forced to deal with decisions on exclusion of pupils made by schools.

Is the system better run now than in the 1960s. The big test currently facing much of England is how local areas will deal with falling school rolls. Who will decide on which schools close or take reduced intakes? Should there be local democratic debate about this issue, or, in our fast-moving modern worlds, are local views irrelevant?

I am on the side of those that still believe there is a role for local communities in the management of schooling, and do not like the NHS style model that is increasingly commonplace. However, because education never polls highly as an issue during general elections, I fear we will have a schooling system designed and run by professionals, and with little or no scrutiny or oversight. We will be the poorer for this outcome.

This post was written for the University of Liverpool’s School of Education blog in November. however, the link has been broken, so i am reposting my thoughts here on my own blog.

Will local government reorganisation pose a risk to Children’s Services?

Posted on December 15, 2025 by John Howson

I don’t often comment on Children’s Services in local government, preferring to stick to education about which I hopefully know more. However, having served a period of time as a Cabinet member for Children’s Services in a shire county, I couldn’t resist reading the report published last week by the DfE from the commissioner put into Devon County Council to oversee the improvement oft heir Children’s services.

There were two interesting comments from that report caught my eye.

The first deal with the issue of local government re-organisation: not strictly part of the Commissioner’s brief, but an interesting and thoughtful comment

“Although not in the remit of this particular piece of work it would be wrong not to highlight a second significant risk. The current round of Local Government Reorganisation (LGR) consultations is already consuming large amounts of political and operational time. However, that isn’t the main risk. The bigger concern would be for any recommendation which leads to the break up and fragmentation of Devon CC and the existing arrangements for children’s services. Given the positive improvement trajectory I have seen and identified in this report and the critical importance of having a well led and well functioning children’s services for the local population anything that breaks that model would risk stopping the existing work in its tracks with an even bigger risk that things would quickly slip backwards. As stated, this is not strictly in my brief to comment on, but the potential impact of LGR on services that are now showing signs of improvement should be appropriately considered by government as part of their decision making process.”

The second comment was, of course, interesting to me as a Liberal Democrat.

“Following the recent local elections Devon now has new political leadership. The Lib Dem group have made an impressive ‘fresh start’ and they are very clear that they will be judged on the improvements they are determined to see in Children’s Services. Children’s services are undoubtedly the top priority for Devon County Council. Three cabinet members (including the Leader) hold portfolios across Children’s services – Education, Lead Member and SEND. My observations of two cabinet meetings and scrutiny alongside additional face to face meetings assures me that the Leader and his team are very serious about bringing about the improvements needed.”

Commissioner’s report on children’s services

Managing a Children’s Services is probably a much more complex task than managing adult social services in local authorities, as Children’s Services encompasses not only the whole of the remaining education functions of a local authority, but also children in care or at risk, plus youth justice, and youth services, as well as relationships with the NHS over SEND. This wide range of activities may be why so many local authorities have received adverse reports over the past few years.

Indeed, an analysis of the reports by the size of the authority may well help to support the view of Devon’s commissioner about local government review. Is there a minimum size for a Children’s Service to function effectively, and does it need good political oversight?

SEND: we know the issue – but we still won’t say how it will be solved

Posted on November 26, 2025 by John Howson

Buried in the OBR Review in Chapter 5 is the following CP 1439 – Office for Budget Responsibility – Economic and fiscal outlook – November 2025

Correction to Chapter 5, paragraph 5.19, second bullet Text currently reads: If it were fully funded within the Department for Education’s £69 billion RDEL core schools budget in 2028-29, this would imply a 1.7 per cent real fall in mainstream school spending per pupil rather than the 2.4 per cent increase planned by Government.

Text should read: If it were fully funded within the Department for Education’s £69 billion RDEL core schools budget in 2028-29, this would imply a 4.9 per cent real fall in mainstream school spending per pupil rather than the 0.5 per cent real increase planned by Government.

5.19 Special educational needs and disabilities: As set out in more detail in Box 5.1, the Government has announced that from 2028-29 the cost of SEND provision will be fully absorbed within the existing RDEL envelope. The Government has not set out any specific plans on how this pressure, which we estimate at £6 billion in 2028-29, would be accommodated within the existing RDEL envelope. If it were fully funded within the Department for Education’s £69 billion RDEL core schools budget in 2028-29, this would imply a 4.9 per cent real fall in mainstream school spending per pupil rather than the 0.5 per cent real increase planned by Government. The Government has stated that it will set out proposed reforms to SEND provision early in the new year.

So, another function disappears from local authorities, presumably to the DfE as SEND funding will be handled at a national level. Will it include management of transport as well as granting of EHCPs? Who knows, the OBR don’t, but warn that funding per pupil could fall by 4.9%. For many schools, this will be on top of any loss of income from falling rolls. Start planning now for such an outcome.

More to come when the White Paper finally emerges sometime in 2026

No High Needs Block data in NFF announcement

Posted on November 20, 2025 by John Howson

Yesterday, the DfE announced the National Funding Formula (NFF) for 2026/27 The national funding formula for schools The formula covers schools and local authority delivered central services

Unlike last year, there is no section on the High Needs Block that deals with SEND funding. The details will be announced later, at some unspecified time. One other small change seems to be in the calculation of the sparsity index, where the footnote from the 2025/26 NFF document seems to be missing from the main document this year.

Last year, there as a footnote that stated in a footnote on page 26 – paragraphs were not numbered last year – that “6 A compatible school means one of the relevant phases which a pupil could attend. Selective grammar schools are not considered when identifying the second nearest compatible school, but faith schools are included.”

This year, paragraph 25 states that “Eligibility for sparsity funding depends on the distance the pupils living closest to the school would have to travel to their next nearest compatible school, and the average number of pupils per year group.” However, there is no comment about what is a compatible school.

So, no change, apart from the lack of a definition of a ‘compatible school’. This footnote has now been relocated to the Technical Manual, and appears as footnote 9 on page 19 of the manual. Schools block national funding formula 2026 to 2027: technical note

Overall, the minimum per pupil funding for primary pupils increases from £4955 to £5115, and for secondary pupils up to year 11, from £6,455 to £6,640. Schools

in IDACI band G will, as before, receive no additional funding through that factor. If they don’t qualify for additional funds through other factors, and some schools won’t, as 62.5% of LSOAs are in IDACI Band G, this could be a challenging year for them.

Many of these schools will no doubt turn to parents for support, or perhaps more will follow the north London school, and look to bring in additional income from operating overseas alongside the many private schools that already have overseas campuses?

With the budget next week, and the local government settlement not being announced any earlier than last year, plus the delay in the High Needs Block announcement, this is going to be a tough budget setting time for schools and local authorities between now and February, when the upper tier local authorities responsible for the NFF must set their council budgets.

Perhaps the High Needs block will feature as a rabbit in the Chancellor’s budget speech to make everyone feel better that the government has found a solution to the massive deficits protected by the override that was extended to March 2027.

Reading the document, I was also struck by the fact that there are more references to local authorities than to the ‘schools forum’. Has the latter run its course as a decision-making body? Is it time to review its future, and certainly its membership?

Windfall profits and SEND

Posted on August 1, 2025 by John Howson

There is no doubt that the rise in demand for special school places over the past few years was neither anticipated nor effectively dealt with by the State. One consequence is that large amount of off-balance sheet debt being carried by many local authorities responsible for schooling in England. Another consequence, highlighted by the Liberal Democrats in a press release issued today, is what might be described as the ‘windfall’ profits being made by a few in the SEND sector. Lib Dems demand cap on SEND providers profits as top firms rake in £100m – Liberal Democrats

When the highest paid director of a company operating both care homes for children and special schools is paid over £300,000, or more than twice the salary of a Director of Children’s Services commissioning the use of places in the schools and homes, it seems sensible to question whether such use of public money should continue.

At this point, I must make clear that I am a capitalist. The 40 years I have traded on my own account and through a company, as well as held a portfolio of investments in other companies. However, there are two issues that concern me. Where should the boundary line between services offered by the State and those run by the private sector be drawn? And how should price be determined?

It is interesting, as I have noted before, that in the USA and many other countries, public transportation is just that: a service run by the State. In England it has become a battleground between the State and private enterprise and the differing political opinions. Most would expect SEND to be a public service.

What often seems to be lacking is a mechanism to regulate the costs of suppliers to the State. When the private sector funds its enterprise by borrowing to provide the services and then expects the State to service that debt with a profit element added, it seems to me like time to take the service out of the private sector, and back into public provision.

In the case of SEND school places, national and local government should work together to prove places in state-run schools that would obviate the need for private sector intervention. This means the State, in this case the DfE, being much more interventionalist than has been the case.

The Liberal Democrats, of which I am a member and activist, noted in their press release that

‘Research commissioned by the party and carried out by the House of Commons Library showed that the top handful of profiting companies each took home tens of millions a year. One Group, operators of 28 special schools, turned over just over £200 million a year, making £44 million in profit – a margin of over 20%. That profit is 150% what the company made in 2022.’

How many more teachers might the £44 million have funded? While we wait for the government to produce a White Paper on SEND, perhaps the Local Government Association should set up a taskforce to remove the need to use the private sector.

I am sure that when John Stuart Mill, the nineteenth century philosopher, said that’ it was the duty of the State to see it citizens were educated, not to educate them itself’ he did not expect the cost to the State to be more than a reasonable amount.

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.

John Howson

Education and the numbers that affect what happens

Tag Archives: local government