Tag Archives: NHS

Should the NHS pay more to support children with SEND?

Posted on by
1

The new index of deprivation, published today by the government, contains an important message about affluent areas such as Oxfordshire.  English indices of deprivation 2025: statistical release – GOV.UK

Oxfordshire ranks highly on three of the four areas I looked at, and especially so on Health and Employment, where the lowest rankings are 65/296 in health and 36/296 in employment, and the highest 8/296 in health and 4/296 in employment.

District CouncilEducationHealthCrimeEmployment
South Oxfordshire258288287292
Vale of White Horse235284283275
West Oxfordshire233279285263
Cherwell155252231260
City of Oxford156231123262
District CouncilEducationHealthCrimeEmployment
South Oxfordshire38894
Vale of White Horse61121321
West Oxfordshire63171133
Cherwell141446536
City of Oxford1406517334

However, the ranking for both Cherwell and City of Oxford districts for education, at 141 and 140/296 compare badly with the ranking elsewhere in the county. Overall, the education ranks are still the lowest ranking scores for all districts, except for the City of Oxford, where the ranking for crime is 173/296, over a hundred places lower than any other district in the county.

The comparison between the education rankings and the health rankings raises an interesting question. Why is education doing so badly in Oxfordshire, especially in the urban areas of Oxford and Banbury? It is difficult to blame the local authority, as all but one of the secondary schools and many primary schools are academies and part of MATs.

Perhaps the formula for education funding is so linked to the county’s rank across all indices that the current funding formula for schools cannot compensate for the needs of Oxfordshire children living in its most deprived communities.

It is clear that there are issues nationally with the formula for the High Needs Block that funds SEND, but again does Oxfordshire lose out more than other areas? After all, it schools are generally highly regarded by ofsted; it has two world class universities, and leading science and technology companies driving the economy.

On the SEND issues, one question is whether the NHS is pulling its weight on supporting children with SEND? Assuming that the overall ranking for the county is not going to see any government be more generous to Oxfordshire with regard to funding, however the present county may be configured post local government reorganisation, then there must be a strong case to require the NHS to spend more resources on supporting children with special needs even if its overall ranking slips a few places as a result. This would reduce the need for the county, and the schools within the county, having to prop up spending on SEND that should really come from the health budget.  

There is no doubt Oxfordshire is not a county with a high degree of deprivation, but what deprivation there is can be concentrated in a few wards in the urban areas abut also spread out across the rural parts of the county. The former is easy to identify, the latter more of a challenge. Both need more funding for education.

Reform of Home to School Transport needed

Posted on by
Reply

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.”