I think if you look at the money spent on educating children with SEN, it’s a small percentage of the council budget. Supporting children with suitable education isn’t sending councils bust. Under funding and mismanagement of funds is. This is just attention grabbing headline, and sensationalism. Our local authority will buy private properties and land to sell at a loss, but won’t support our most vulnerable young people with an education and they get blamed.
What we are seeing are schools being nominated the funding but offering a child 1hr a day at reception. Is this legal? Is this discriminatory?
This has a monumantal negative affect on children and families who get into financial straits as they cannot work. Where is the £6000/term funds given for these children? What are Ofsted doing about this?
If a child is nominated a 1:3 ratio instead of a 1:1 there would be results in favour of the child.
Also, the routines need to be nature based and not classroomed with organised outings to local parks daily. This would give these children the wellbeing, calmness and sensory a classroom does not give them.
We had 40 SEND children with only 2 given funding for 1:1 last year. We achieved incredible results with all of these children without funding given. However, after the press were involved we magically got funding for 6 more children in two weeks despite many previous attempts for support.
A solid strategy and not always money is the answer and people in charge of the money that KNOW and CARE enough to not let this carry on a moment longer is what is needed.
You'll need to take out a free trial of the (excellent) Comment Is Freed substack (believe me, it's worth it).
Sam is a former Department for Education adviser. The thrust of the piece is about the holes in the position of one Conservative leadership candidate, but the detail gives a policymaker's system-wide analysis of how the system is broken.
I really encourage everyone to read it to understand how some technical policy changes have led to (amplified) changes in behavours and incentives.
This disasterous Labour government have made the situation worse as the parents of SEND children that were going to private schools may no longer be able to afford to do so because of Labours misconceived poitics of envy causing an overnight 20% jump in fees. So Labour won't get the VAT but the local authority wil now have extra SEND children to provide for.
This whole issue has stayed under the radar in spite of of the soaring costs and rising demand.
As he has shown leadership in this since he was elected I would suggest that Mike Reader asks for a parliamentary debate on the subject as we are not alone in Northamptonshire in having a crisis and this threatens to overwhelm the councils financially and that will degrade other services.
Because research has led to more children being identified as having special educational needs. Unfortunately the reality is that for many of these children a mainstream school isn’t equipped or funded to deal with the needs of these children, due to under funding.
I think if you look at the money spent on educating children with SEN, it’s a small percentage of the council budget. Supporting children with suitable education isn’t sending councils bust. Under funding and mismanagement of funds is. This is just attention grabbing headline, and sensationalism. Our local authority will buy private properties and land to sell at a loss, but won’t support our most vulnerable young people with an education and they get blamed.
Is the council still happy sending vulnerable children to their mates independent schools?
The situation needs managing.
What we are seeing are schools being nominated the funding but offering a child 1hr a day at reception. Is this legal? Is this discriminatory?
This has a monumantal negative affect on children and families who get into financial straits as they cannot work. Where is the £6000/term funds given for these children? What are Ofsted doing about this?
If a child is nominated a 1:3 ratio instead of a 1:1 there would be results in favour of the child.
Also, the routines need to be nature based and not classroomed with organised outings to local parks daily. This would give these children the wellbeing, calmness and sensory a classroom does not give them.
We had 40 SEND children with only 2 given funding for 1:1 last year. We achieved incredible results with all of these children without funding given. However, after the press were involved we magically got funding for 6 more children in two weeks despite many previous attempts for support.
A solid strategy and not always money is the answer and people in charge of the money that KNOW and CARE enough to not let this carry on a moment longer is what is needed.
It’s illegal and discriminatory without a doubt but Northants have denied children what they need educationally for years, it’s a disgrace
For an absolutely informed and forensic explanation about 'autism and the special needs crisis' , take a look at https://samf.substack.com/p/kemi-badenochs-misdiagnosis .
You'll need to take out a free trial of the (excellent) Comment Is Freed substack (believe me, it's worth it).
Sam is a former Department for Education adviser. The thrust of the piece is about the holes in the position of one Conservative leadership candidate, but the detail gives a policymaker's system-wide analysis of how the system is broken.
I really encourage everyone to read it to understand how some technical policy changes have led to (amplified) changes in behavours and incentives.
This disasterous Labour government have made the situation worse as the parents of SEND children that were going to private schools may no longer be able to afford to do so because of Labours misconceived poitics of envy causing an overnight 20% jump in fees. So Labour won't get the VAT but the local authority wil now have extra SEND children to provide for.
This whole issue has stayed under the radar in spite of of the soaring costs and rising demand.
As he has shown leadership in this since he was elected I would suggest that Mike Reader asks for a parliamentary debate on the subject as we are not alone in Northamptonshire in having a crisis and this threatens to overwhelm the councils financially and that will degrade other services.
I would be interested to understand why we have "a growing number of children needing specialist education".
Because research has led to more children being identified as having special educational needs. Unfortunately the reality is that for many of these children a mainstream school isn’t equipped or funded to deal with the needs of these children, due to under funding.