SEND Provision: Hertfordshire and Central Bedfordshire

Catherine McKinnell Excerpts

Wednesday 4th September 2024 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for School Standards (Catherine McKinnell)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you as Chair, Dr Huq. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin (Alistair Strathern) on securing this debate on an incredibly important subject. His excellent speech set out in great detail the challenges that far too many face in his local area. He is a champion for children and families in his constituency, and he shares this Government’s vision of breaking down the barriers to opportunity and ensuring all children receive the best start in life and the right support, so that they succeed in their education and lead happy, healthy and productive lives. I thank him for his kind words in opening. I assure him that improving the special educational needs and disabilities system across this country is a priority for this Government, and that includes improving services for children and young people with SEND in Central Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire.

More than 1.6 million children and young people in England have special educational needs. We know that for far too long, as hon. Members on both sides of the House have set out, they have been let down by a system that is not working. The former Secretary of State for Education said that the system was “lose, lose, lose”, and she was right: far too many families have been failed. Despite high needs funding for children and young people with complex special educational needs and disabilities rising to higher and higher levels, confidence in the SEND system is low, tribunal rates are increasing and there are increasingly long waits for support. Far too many children with special educational needs fall behind their peers, and they do not reach the fundamental expected level in reading, writing and maths. Just one in four pupils achieved the expected standard at the end of primary school. Families struggle to get their child the support they need and, more importantly, deserve. That really must change.

Parents have felt frustrated for years, and there have been constant delays to the reform programme; we see time and again that there is a lack of trust in the system. This Government want to be honest with families. We are committed to improving inclusivity and expertise in mainstream schools, and ensuring that special schools can cater to those with the most complex needs. Fundamentally, we want to restore parents’ trust that their child will get the support they need to flourish. Effective early identification and intervention can reduce the impact that a special educational need or disability may have in the long term. That is why, in July, the Government announced that the funded support for the 11,100 schools registered for the Nuffield early language intervention programme will continue for the year 2024-25. We know that extra support with speech and language is so important to help young people find their voice.

But there are no quick fixes for these deep-rooted issues. After 14 years, I have barely seen a system as broken. It is in desperate need of reform, so it is important that we fix it. I welcome the comments from the hon. Members for Mid Bedfordshire (Blake Stephenson) and for Broxbourne (Lewis Cocking), who recognise that this is an inherited challenge; so many of us in this House want to see it addressed.

Let me be clear: we have started work already. Fixing our SEND system is a priority for the Department, but I have to be clear that it will take time and Government cannot do it alone. We will work with our essential and valued partners in the sector to ensure that our approach is fully planned and delivered. We will work together with parents, schools, councils and expert staff who, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin rightly said, go above and beyond to support our children.

We are acting as quickly as we can to respond to the cost pressures in the SEND system because they are causing real financial problems in some local authorities, including in Hertfordshire and Central Bedfordshire. Before the parliamentary recess we announced a new core schools budget grant, which will provide special and alternative provision schools with over £140 million of extra funding in the 2024-25 financial year to help with the extra costs of the teachers’ pay award and the outcome of the negotiations for support staff. That is in addition to the high needs funding allocations for children and young people with complex special educational needs and disabilities.

Department for Education budgets have not yet been set for 2025-26. How much high needs funding is distributed to local authority schools and colleges next year will depend on the next stage of the Government spending review, due to be announced at the end of October. We are in listening mode to the challenges that are being set out today. That means that next year’s allocations of high needs funding have not been published to the normal timescales, but we are working across Government to announce next year’s allocations for Hertfordshire, Central Bedfordshire and other local authorities as soon as we possibly can.

We are acutely aware of the financial pressures that local authorities are facing, not just from supporting young people with complex needs, but from what we have inherited as a whole with the economic climate and the challenges around that. Resolving these problems will not be quick or easy, and it is important that we take the time to develop long-term solutions to ensure that we take a long-term approach to tackling these issues. I welcome the opportunity to hear Members’ thoughts on how we can do that together as we go forward. We need to ensure that we get better outcomes from our investment for young people. It is important that we have a fair education funding system that directs funding to where it is needed and can make the most impact. One aspect of that is the national funding formula and the way in which the high needs funding allocated to local authorities is used. We need to take time, if there are any changes to that formula, to ensure that we consider the impact and get it right.

As we know, Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission jointly inspect local area SEND provision. Those inspections enable the Department to intervene in areas of significant concern, and work with local authorities and professional advisers to address weaknesses. I am concerned that the SEND inspections in Central Bedfordshire in November 2019 and in Hertfordshire in July ’23 found significant concerns about the experiences and outcomes of children with special educational needs and disabilities. Ofsted and the CQC revisited Central Bedfordshire in July ’22, and found that three of the six initial areas of weakness had improved. Central Bedfordshire produced an accelerated progress plan to address the remaining areas of weakness, and the Department continues to monitor those areas. The issues raised in the inspection reports are serious. The Government need to be confident that the local area in Central Bedfordshire and the local area partnership in Hertfordshire are taking the right actions to secure rapid and sustainable improvement.

We work alongside NHS England advisers, we meet every six months with local leaders and representatives from schools and colleges, and we have a parent carer forum to review and challenge progress on the accelerated progress plan. In Hertfordshire, the local area appointed Dame Christine Lenehan to chair an independent board to bring about rapid improvement. DFE officials, an NHS England adviser and a SEND adviser meet monthly with local leaders and Dame Christine to scrutinise and challenge the improvement plan. It is so important that that work is undertaken.

I am conscious of time. I want to do justice to the excellent speech given by my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin, but I fear I will not have time to address all the concerns that he raised; he went into quite some detail. I am keen to write to him with more details of the ongoing work in order to reassure him that many of the issues he raised are being tackled, and that the Department for Education is working to ensure that the improvement programmes are delivered. I thank him again for bringing this matter forward. We are all passionate about the SEND outcomes in his local area and right across the country. We recognise that the system needs to improve, we recognise the hardship that many families are facing, and we are determined that that will change. Like my hon. Friend, I thank everyone working in the SEND system to deliver better outcomes for all our children across the country.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).