SEND Provision

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Walker]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing that opportunity, and for all the progress that he has made in drawing attention to the needs of dyslexic children and identifying those needs early. He is right that we need to look at how we better support universal identification of need at an earlier stage. He will recognise that some conditions only show themselves over time, so it is important that there are the right interventions at every level to identify those needs and ensure they are properly met.

When we debate children missing school, as we often have in recent years, we often find it difficult to tell which are doing so because of unmet need. The work of the Children’s Commissioner, among many others, has highlighted that that is a major cause. When we debate rising levels of home education without the benefit of a much-needed statutory register, which the Government have now pledged to support, we find it impossible to tell how many of the rising number of cases are genuinely elective. My hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) is sponsor of a Bill that seeks to address the issue, and I hope the whole House will support its Second Reading tomorrow. I welcome the fact that Opposition Front Benchers have already done so and I believe that the Government have as well.

Both those factors, as highlighted in the Education Committee’s report on persistent absence, point to the need for urgent action on SEND. The Government’s own Command Paper is also clear on that point. In fact, in preparing for this debate, I was struck by recent comments made by the Secretary of State at the Association of School and College Leaders conference:

“The massive demand, of more and more children diagnosed or even not diagnosed but have special educational needs, that’s something that I don’t think we’ve got the right system in place. If you look at special education needs, we haven’t built enough special educational needs places or schools. We have councils under pressure because families can’t get the right support that they need”—

a succinct summary of the nature of the challenge, which colleagues across the House will recognise all too well.

In that context, we need to consider the departmental estimates of the Department for Education, the £57.8 billion rising to £58.5 billion for the core schools budget, and the £82 billion rising to more than £100 billion overall in the supplementary estimate, as well as the £6.3 billion capital budget. Although it would be easy for a Government Member to point to those big numbers and trumpet what are without doubt record sums in cash terms for revenue funding, they do not tell the whole story.

The excellent House of Commons Library briefing prepared for this debate confirms both cash and real-terms growth in spending on high needs since 2015, as well as a faster trajectory of increasing need as identified by education, health and care plans. Within those numbers, it is to the credit of Ministers in this Government that the amount spent on high-needs funding has doubled in the past 10 years and has increased by more than 60% since 2019. That shows some recognition of the importance of investing in this space.

But it is also clear, as we debated on the F40—Campaign for Fairer Funding in Education—motion a few weeks ago, that revenue funding has not been sufficient to meet demand. Over the same period, the growth of EHCPs alone has more than doubled. The level of need demonstrated not only by the number rising from 240,000 nine years ago to more than 500,000 today, but by the complexity of conditions and the demand for specialist places to support highly complex pupils, has grown even faster. I am told that 180 children per day are being identified as having special educational needs.

For every child with an EHCP, as the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) pointed out, many more are awaiting assessment or have their needs already met in public or independent schools without the need for an EHCP. Nevertheless, those children also need support. I do not intend to rehearse all the arguments for the early identification of support need, but that is a vital part of the argument.

Also to the credit of Ministers is the greater recognition in recent years of the need for more capital investment in SEND places. Even in the most recent Budget, the main capital commitment for school-age education was a further £105 million for 15 SEN free schools, delivering up to 2,000 specialist places across the country. I welcome that, but I observe that the calculation that just over £100 million can deliver 15 whole new special schools seems a challenging one. That gives a cost of £52,000 per place, compared with more than £86,666 per place in the calculations that the Government made only three years ago—before the impact of three years of high inflation for building costs.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and for all he does on the Education Committee. In my constituency surgeries, I, like many Members of Parliament, see parents in real pain. They want the best for their child, and they are waiting for one to two years to get a plan so that their healthcare and education needs can be met. My hon. Friend asked about the allocation of the £105 million in the Budget. Can he clarify his understanding of how the Government will allocate that across the country? I need an allocation for my constituents in Gillingham and Rainham, who urgently need it. All Members want to know whether that will be done on a fair basis.

[Mr Walker]

I congratulate my hon. Friend for making the case for his constituents. The question he asks is one for those on the Front Bench, and I hope the Minister can further clarify the process of allocating those resources.

At the last spending review in 2021, the Department secured £2.6 billion over the review period for a mixture of new specialist settings, expansions of existing ones and delivery of bases in mainstream schools. In total, that was designed to deliver 30,000 new school places. Will the Minister, in his reply, update the House on progress on spending that substantial capital investment? Can he update the House, too, on the total number of specialist places already delivered? Will he explain how deliverable the Government have found this programme, at a cost of about £86,666 per place, and the rationale for the Budget announcement being so much cheaper?