Tag Archives: special schools

SEND on the agenda again

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Until recently, the difference between the High Needs Block and remainder of the Dedicated Schools Grant that funds schooling in England was known only to a few officers and civil servants and those headteachers and governors serving on School Forum. The advent of a National Funding Formula for schools outside the special school sector and a growing demand for spending on children with additional needs has brought the issues with the High Needs Block into sharp relief.

The Local Government Association has published the outcomes of the research they commissioned earlier this year. A key paragraph sets out the issues and reflects two of the key issues, the ability of local authorities to ensure all schools act in ‘the common good’ instead of ‘their own good’ and the effects on the school funding of an extension of support to young people up to the age of twenty five from the High Needs budget, not originally designed for that age range.   The report can be found at: https://www.local.gov.uk/have-we-reached-tipping-point-trends-spending-children-and-young-people-send-england

Addressing the points raised in paragraph 17 of the Report would go a long way to creating a sustainable and successful system for young people with SEND.

  1. To create a more sustainable funding settlement going forward there may be merit in considering some key questions around how incentives in the system might be better aligned to support inclusion, meet needs within the local community of schools, and corral partners to use the high needs block to support all young people with SEND as a collective endeavour. These might include
  2. setting much clearer national expectations for mainstream schools;
  3. rethinking how high stakes accountability measures reflect the achievements of schools which make good progress with children and young people with SEND or at risk of exclusion;
  4. correcting the perverse funding incentives that mean that it can be cheaper to pass the cost of an EHCP or a permanent exclusion onto the high needs block than making good quality preventative support available in-school;
  5. looking again at the focus and content of EHCPs to afford greater flexibility to schools in how they arrange and deliver the support needed;
  6. providing ring-fenced investment from government designed explicitly to support new and evidence-based approaches to early intervention and prevention at scale;
  7. providing additional capital investment and flexibility about how that can be deployed by local government;
  8. issuing a national call for evidence in what works for educating children and young people with these needs, backed up by sufficient funding to then take successful approaches to scale and a new focus for teacher training and ongoing professional development;
  9. more specific advice for Tribunals, parents and local authorities on how the test on efficient use of resources can be applied fairly when comparing state and non-state special school placements; and
  10. reaffirming the principle around the equitable sharing of costs between health and education where these are driven by the health needs of the child or young person.

At present, there are perverse incentives for schools to look first to their needs and only then to the needs of children with SEND. The extension of the age range to twenty five brought many more young people into scope without necessarily providing the resource.

The announcement of more cash by the Secretary of State will help, but is almost certainly not enough to solve the problems being faced within many local authorities. At the heart of this is broken system for governance of our schools. In the post Brexit world, whatever it looks like, creating a coherent education system with democratic accountability across the board should be a high priority for the Education Department and its Ministers at Westminster.

 

High Needs Block

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Alongside the consultation on the national funding formula for mainstream schools there is a similar consultation for what is known as the ‘High needs’ group of pupils. This consultation has received far less notice than the mainstream NFF consultation, but is arguably as important for pupils with some of the most challenging of needs.

At the heart of the consultation is the central dilemma facing education in England. Who makes the decisions? The new formula proposes placing a great deal of responsibility with local authorities, as at present. That’s fine, but it ignores the fact that free schools can be established where local authorities might not want them and existing schools can become academies and thus alter their governance structure in relation to the local authority.

The ‘high need’ special education sector has always been a complex area to understand. There are some that think the current proposals out for consultation show that even the government doesn’t fully understand the issues. For example, the government doesn’t seem to have a policy for the use of the often highly expensive independent sector for placements of children where there is a shortage of space or expertise in the state-funded sector. This can be a real burden on some authorities. However, the consultation, in as far as it addresses the issue, seems to opt for the status quo. It might have been helpful to have tried to work out nationally how this expenditure could be reduced without damaging the education of the young people.

The formula has also to grapple with the issue of providing enough places, even if not always filled, and how far to use a methodology where funding follows the pupils, as with pupil unit funding in the mainstream school formula. I am not sure the proposed methodology is going to work as effectively as it might be required to do so. I am concerned that it mustn’t persuade some mainstream academies to ditch existing special provision units leaving the local authority to figure out how to provide a high quality education for these children plus a possible increase in the local transport bill. Local authorities should be able to challenge, if not veto, changes in existing provision not part of a planned and agreed local arrangement, especially where the MAT has its headquarters outside of the authority’s area.

I am worried about the inclusion of IDACI as one of the formula factors. Taken together the total of formula factors seem slanted to special needs caused or exacerbated by deprivation. I understand the concept, but for an authority such as Oxfordshire with limited pockets of urban and rural deprivation, many of our children with high needs don’t live in areas where this factor will be a key determinant. However, those children still need the funding necessary for their education. A review of SEN transport, especially in rural areas and complex non-residential cases, might have raised some issues about planning.

Overall, this looks like a redistribution of the current funding envelope rather than a formula based upon an understanding of the complex needs of this group of young people. It is also a work in progress since the funding of hospital schools isn’t included. I hope when it is a full understanding of the needs of young people with both physical and mental health issues and their relationship with the hospital service is included.

If you haven’t yet looked at this consultation, please do so.

Time to listen

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Why do children with hearing loss, but no other impediment to their learning, fare so much worse than children of a similar ability but with normal hearing patterns? You could ask the same question of children with other disabilities. Later this month the DfE should publish outcome figures for the 2015 GCSE results for these pupils.

Last year, the National Deaf Children’s Society a key campaigner in the field of education for children with hearing impairment, published a chilling report on the state of their education http://www.ndcs.org.uk/for_the_media/press_releases/deaf_children_slip.html only 36% of these children achieved the %A-Cs at GCSE compared with more than 60% of their hearing classmates. Even more concerning was the decline in specialist teachers of hearing impaired children.

It is this latter point that concerns me at this time. Does our fractured governance system which fails to rate professional development of teachers properly now allow for a system to ensure the training of sufficient teachers of hearing impaired pupils or indeed or other pupils that need specialist training. Is there any obligation on multi-academy trusts or single converter academies to ever consider this type of issue? Local authorities certainly won’t these days and, I guess, it hasn’t featured on the agenda of many of the School Forums responsible for setting policy on funding distribution across school in an area. Funding is ever more weighted towards pupils and their immediate needs and rarely takes into account the longer-term strategic needs of the school system.

One implication of more pupils overall is that the number with impaired hearing is also likely to rise in proportion. This means that more teachers should be trained. How will this happen? Could such teachers be incorporated into the National Teaching Service or will we expect enthusiastic teachers to take out one of the new career loans for higher degrees on top of their existing student debt to provide out cadre of qualified teachers of hearing impaired pupils in the future, let alone the leaders in the special schools where some of these children are located. Who is going to employ the advisers to help classroom teachers with a child with mild hearing loss in their class to perform to the best of their ability and help close the performance gap?

These pupils and their compatriots with other special needs deserve a high quality schooling system not to be pushed to the margins of policy-making. I am sure that they aren’t seen as a nuisance, but perhaps they aren’t seen enough or even at all by those that consider these issues. There are only around 20,000 pupils with recognised hearing impairment in our school system, but each and every one deserves the best possible education. As, indeed, do all other pupils with special needs.