The crisis in SEND is arguably one of the biggest challenges for Government to resolve, and the greatest existential threat to local authorities.
Demand for SEND support has sharply risen in recent years, whilst funding and resources have failed to keep pace. This means children are not always provided with the help they need quickly enough, or in the right setting. Meanwhile local authorities are on course to have a cumulative SEND deficit of £5bn by 2026.
The system is at breaking point.
The number of children with an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) has doubled since changes to the SEND Code of Practice were introduced in 2014. While the Code was well intentioned, aiming to better support children with extra needs, it was not backed with the necessary funding.
However, as the number of children requiring intervention has increased, so too has their complexity of need.
Schools and local authorities are providing much greater SEND support to children and young people with high needs, whilst also providing support to an increasing number of children and young people with an autism diagnosis, and social, emotional and mental health difficulties.
Government funding for SEND has increased since 2019, but it has not matched demand or school-specific inflation. A lack of funding between 2014 and 2019 created such huge problems, we now find ourselves in a SEND crisis that only investment and reform will resolve.
We firmly believe funding must be targeted at early intervention and helping our mainstream schools to provide meaningful SEND support.
We need to meet children’s needs earlier. Too often, support is only available at the point of crisis, not at the point of need.
With additional targeted funding that supports a SEND strategy and greater early intervention, children may be better equipped to meet their milestones and the long-term reliance on costly SEND support reduced.
SEND in crisis
Local authorities in England are expected to have a cumulative £5bn SEND deficit by March 2026. Unless dealt with, many councils, as well as education providers, fear their deficits will lead them to bankruptcy.
More than half of local authorities (LAs) in England are working with the Department for Education through its intervention and support programmes – The Safety Valve Programme (34 LAs) and the Delivering Better Value in SEND programme (55 LAs). These programmes have been introduced to assist those local authorities with the greatest deficits.
So far, the programmes have shown that while local authorities are, in the main, doing all the right things, meeting the cost of future growth and inflation is likely to negate any savings that the programmes bring. If anything, due to ongoing increases in demand, deficits will only get worse.
To continue to significantly under-resource SEND services is counter-productive. It puts huge pressure on local authorities to make savings by reducing early intervention, which puts more pressure on the higher, more costly types of support.
It also pits local authorities against families, who understandably want the best for their children.
All local authorities are struggling with insufficient SEND funding, but for f40 members, who are among the lowest funded, the challenges are exacerbated.
The High Needs funding formula should be amended and updated to ensure the fair distribution of SEND funding, enabling flexibility in how it is utilised.
Currently, SEND funding is based on historical need in each local authority area, which bears no resemblance to the needs of today.
This means local authorities with similar SEND responsibilities can receive wildly different funding. Conversely, authorities with very different SEND needs, can receive the same.
High Needs funding should be based on today’s requirements, with funding specifically targeted at those children and areas where it is needed the most.
Historic proxy factors that lock in funding for some areas whilst capping others from receiving more should be removed. We appreciate there will always be some differences in funding due to area living costs and specific school and pupil needs, but the current disparity is far too wide.
All children should have access to the same support and opportunities, regardless of where they live.
We must invest in our state specialist provision if we are to resolve the crisis in SEND.
We need more specialist SEND places now, not in five or ten years.
The recent announcement of £2.6bn of capital funding to support specialist provision was welcome but nowhere near enough, especially with rising school-build costs and an historic lack of investment.
In the recent rounds of bidding for capital funding, many local authorities were unsuccessful.
We believe significantly more capital funding is required to help reverse the historic 80% cut in schools’ devolved formula capital funding. This has limited schools’ abilities to make local improvements to help their inclusion of SEND pupils.
Additional capital funding should be fairly distributed to all local authorities to allow them to decide how best to boost their SEND provision and capacity, based on their local needs.
Providing additional state provision will reduce the over-reliance on expensive independent SEND provision – which can cost up to three times more – and will reduce local authority transport costs. Currently, many children have to be bussed to SEND provision some distance from their homes.
By investing in local SEND state provision, we will ensure the needs of more children can be met by the local authority, and closer to their homes.
And it makes financial sense. A new state SEND school for 200 pupils, costing £19.5m, would save around £6m per year when compared to what a local authority would spend if it was sending those pupils to independent provision. A new school, therefore, would pay for itself in three years.
We all want the best for children
Everybody wants the best for children with SEND, but the current system is not working for anyone.
The adversarial approach to SEND provision pits parents, schools and local authorities against each other, and does little to instil faith in state provision, in both mainstream and special schools.
The SEND crisis is due to a number of factors:
- The Code of Practice 2014 was well intentioned and designed to improve SEND support. However, while it expanded the level of support and choice available to children and young people, including those up to age 25, it has been insufficiently funded. f40 has calculated £4.6bn extra annual SEND revenue is required to meet current need, based on the rise in inflation and EHCPs since 2015. That figure does not allow for further growth.
- The current mainstream school system is insufficiently funded or equipped to deal with the increased demand for SEND support. Staffing issues, stretched budgets, and lack of training and resources, along with an inspection process focusing primarily on academic success, means some schools are not as inclusive as they could be. Too often SEND pupils leave to be home-schooled or are transferred into costly specialist provision when a mainstream place with additional support could have met their needs.
- There is insufficient specialist state SEND provision to meet need. This means children are placed in expensive independent SEND schools, which often cost more than twice as much and are located out of the area. The over-reliance on costly independent provision puts huge financial pressure on local authority SEND and Transport budgets.
- The number of children with SEND has gradually increased due to a growth in population, better detection of conditions, and longer life expectancy for those with very complex health needs. Mental health and speech and language issues have also increased, especially since COVID.
f40 is campaigning for:
- A SEND funding strategy, linked to the SEND and AP Improvement Plan, focusing on early intervention and inclusion.
- Additional SEND revenue funding – f40 has calculated that £4.6bn more is required per year.
- Substantial one-off capital funding to expand state SEND provision, fairly distributed to every local authority, which know best how to match provision with local needs.
- Greater regulation and scrutiny of the independent SEND sector, including around value-for-money.
- Improved clarity around expected ordinarily available SEND provision and support.
- A Government commitment to resolve the SEND crisis and pay off accumulated SEND deficits.
