SEND Provision and Funding

David Davis Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House calls for a review of funding for SEND provision.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will try my absolute best to stay inside your guidance. We have 24 applicants to speak in the debate, which I think is a record, so forgive me if I do not take interventions. Nearly 100,000 people signed petitions relating to these subjects and I am pleased to say that they will have their voices heard in the Chamber today.

The debate about how best to cater for those with special educational needs and disabilities is often dominated by hard numbers: money, places, headcounts and so on. That is obviously a vital part of the discussion, but the real heart of the matter is the human impact, and the children and families behind the figures. My part of the world, the East Riding, has the lowest per capita funding, which is about a third of the highest-funded areas.

I declare an interest, or more than an interest: a prejudice. I have a grandchild who suffers from something called SYNGAP-1, a genetic disease that makes her non-verbal and gives her daily fits and seizures, so she has a very high intensity of requirement. In the two years of covid, she missed 40 days of teaching, over and above lockdown requirements, because of a lack of resources. That is eight weeks of schooling lost, causing enormous distress to a child who needs continuity and stability. We can see immediately how that has an effect. Chloe has complex needs and meeting those needs is a daily challenge for her parents and teachers. For her to miss so much school is simply awful and puts huge pressure on Chloe herself and on the rest of her family.

As important as Chloe is to me, the point is that her case is not unusual. Many of her classmates had and continue to have the same experiences, as do thousands upon thousands of children across the country. Parents, teachers, teaching assistants, mental health workers, carers and a host of others do incredible work to ensure that children get as much help as possible, but they are struggling to provide adequately for everyone. At the moment, the resources are simply not there.

A bit of background here is important. Education, health and care plans—EHCPs, as they are known—were introduced in 2014. This was a well-intentioned reform that sought to provide holistic support for young people in need. But what the reforms failed to do was provide resilience in the system to deal with future changes to demand for services. In recent years, there has been a huge increase in that demand: population growth, better detection of conditions such as autism, and longer life expectancy because of medical progress all put pressures on the system. As a result, the total number of EHCPs and statements of special educational need has more than doubled since 2015. That is a rise of more than a quarter of a million cases, with large increases in every age group, but the funding from central Government simply has not kept pace.

Part of the answer is to update the funding formula. The existing allocation of funds is based on an out-of-date assessment of each area’s special educational needs. Of course, some level of differentiation of funding makes sense, as not every area has the same needs. For example, rurality has a huge impact, as staff, campaigners and families in my area know only too well. Those national pressures lie behind the call by the f40 group, representing local authorities with some of the worst rates of SEND funding, for £4.6 billion in additional annual funding from central Government. The figure is based on that huge growth in the number of EHCPs local authorities have to support, as well as significant inflationary pressures. Each EHCP, tailored to the specific needs of a child requiring additional support, costs the local authority cash, so the more EHCPs are needed, the more local authorities have to cough up and the greater the pressure on their already tight finances. We should remember that in the past two years, six local authorities have already declared themselves effectively bankrupt.

The impact of these pressures on SEND provision is clear for all to see. In 2022, less than half of EHCPs were issued within 20 weeks of application. In other words, one in two children waited more than five months. Given that 13% of children have special educational needs, that is a huge number of kids waiting for help, and many have to wait a lot longer to get the support that they need. In some cases children have to be sent to schools far away owing to a lack of local places, and families struggle, over and above their normal needs, to get appropriate support.

Parents and carers have supplied me with many illustrative examples. One, Jennifer, said that

“we have been on a waiting list for 22 months for my son to see a Speech and Language Therapist...The lack of SEN schools needs addressing as a matter of urgency”

as children are being

“let down and are suffering”.

Another, Esther, said:

“My son hasn’t had his EHCP met in four years in an SEN school... he has not had speech therapy for over three years, nor has he had his physio, occupational therapy, sensory or educational needs met...There is urgent need for more funding so that SEN schools can have appropriate class sizes with therapists and enough qualified and skilled support staff.”

According to one special needs specialist teacher, Louise:

“Services such as speech and language therapy have been reduced dramatically. In my Autism Spectrum Condition Resourced Provision class, we used to have three hours per week and now have three hours per half term.”

Another teacher, Catherine, said:

“We have large numbers of children who require specialist support to allow them to thrive and stay safe”.

Owing to a lack of resources, however, other children are

“receiving minimal support as we are firefighting, just to keep the children…safe.”

The financial impact of all this is, of course, enormous. The cumulative deficit in local authority high needs budgets is estimated to be £2.3 billion, and is expected to reach £3.6 billion by March 2025. There are more than 80 local authorities with large high needs deficits. Currently those deficits are being kept off local authority balance sheets by a statutory override, but the override is time-limited and will expire in 2026 if it is not extended. If and when it does expire, many councils will be bankrupted overnight, with huge implications not just for education but for all local services. That is why the f40 group considers the expiry to be a sword of Damocles hanging over the entire sector. Fifty-five local authorities have had to sign up to the Government’s Delivering Better Value in SEND programme and 34 have had to sign up to the Safety Valve programme—both set up to meet the challenge of dealing with the rising demand and costs—which means that nearly 90 authorities have already had to go to the Government for help.

Of course, it is also crucial that we are able to plan for future challenges so that we can meet them when they arise, rather than constantly firefighting with limited resources. To that end, there needs to be a substantial increase in capital funding to allow local authorities to invest in SEND projects. I say to the Minister that the recent announcement of £2.6 billion for that purpose is welcome, but more is needed. Without the start-up cash, we will simply find ourselves in another crisis in five years’ time. The numbers may sound big, and we all know that these are straitened times for the economy after covid, but in reality, failing to invest is a false economy. We might save some money in the short term, but the long-term costs, both to the budgets and to the children concerned, are huge.

Let us take an example. A child suffering from poor physical and mental health, suicidal ideation and poor school attendance spent a great deal of time refusing to engage at all. Special needs staff, having set out an action plan, gave him one-to-one mentoring support, thrice-weekly pastoral sessions, regular counselling and organised work experience. As a result his school attendance improved, he began to develop friendships with peers, and he was able to manage a full school timetable. His life was transformed.

The reverse scenario, however, happens all too often. As Mo, a speech and language therapist, put it:

“It is widely acknowledged that early intervention is key. However, due to a lack of funding, staffing levels and subsequent long waiting lists, we are unable to provide”

that intervention. A child might, say, have autism and anxiety, and might be struggling to get into school and struggling to cope with the day’s work. Without help, those things get worse. The children come to school less, they find it harder and harder to carry out basic tasks, their friendships suffer, and it is then more difficult for special needs staff to get through to them. Ultimately, they will need a much greater—and more expensive—effort to reintegrate them into schooling, and will require much more long-term care. Intervening early is transformative, and that requires resources to make it possible to act before problems spiral out of control.

A further problem is the severe workforce difficulties that SEND employers face. Specialist teaching assistants, for example, now cost employers about £24,000 each, up from about £16,000 10 years ago. However, the place funding has been not changed from £10,000 per child, so we are not matching that extra demand. Many SEND workers would be better remunerated in less skilled jobs, and in a challenging economic climate, they may be forced to vote with their feet. One therapist, Hayley, said that she had seen

“a huge decline in skills and knowledge of the workforce.”

That will not come as a surprise to anyone in the sector. Of course Ministers say they value the work that SEND staff do, but it must be backed up by funding. Otherwise the workforce will continue to dwindle, with dire consequences for those who rely on their support.

There are many other aspects that I should like to mention, but you wanted me to be sharp, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I will not deal with most of them.

These challenges extend to further education. Young people aged 16 to 25 make up 27% of those with EHCPs, and I know that some of my colleagues will want to touch on that. Moreover, as I have said, this is not simply a matter of funding. Just this week the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), recognised the need for “systemic reform” because families were waiting between nine and 13 months for a hearing after appealing against EHCP decisions.

I am sure that some of my colleagues will go further into these issues in their speeches, and will mention their own experiences of helping families in their constituencies. My right hon. Friend and neighbour the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight) cannot be here this afternoon because of a constituency engagement, but I know that he agrees with all the points I have made. Front Benchers who cannot contribute to the debate also have their concerns. I know that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) has, like many others, been contacted by numerous constituents about this subject, and has taken their worries on board. The same is true of other Ministers who did not particularly want me to mention them; I cannot think why!

The bottom line is this. The support that a society provides for its most vulnerable is a measure of its compassion, and, to my mind, a measure of its civilisation. That is the key. I am sure that the Government share those principles, but now we must find a way to deliver the change that is needed to make them a reality.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir David Davis]

As we saw earlier this week, clear injustices induce an extraordinary unity of purpose across the whole House. We have seen a little of that this day, because we all want to give every child the best possible chance in life, irrespective of their circumstances when they are born and thereafter. To that end, we have had some formidable speeches from Members on both sides of the House. For me, the speech that crystallised the issue most clearly was that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), who said that in 2014 we set out with the EHCP system to try to stop tired, frazzled parents having a never-ending fight to get the right outcome for their children in our system. The EHCP system has not worked. It has not delivered what we wanted because of the massive increase in demand and in complexity.

The increasing costs have overwhelmed even the large increases in expenditure that the Government have provided. That is why we need the review of funding and of allocation, both individually and across regions. The House has heard about my council in East Riding, which is the worst off, but we have heard about the unfairness of the system for individuals too. On behalf of the support staff, who work harder than anybody I know, the teachers, the parents, who have the toughest job there is, and of course the children, who we are here to give a decent life to, I commend the motion to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House calls for a review of funding for SEND provision.