SEND Provision and Funding

Rob Butler Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

Like everyone else, I will start by congratulating my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Sir David Davis) on securing this important debate.

One of the key priorities in my campaign to be elected to this place in 2019 was to give children in the Aylesbury constituency a brilliant start in life—and that means all children, including and, indeed, especially those with special educational needs and disabilities. I am pleased to say that there are several specialist SEND schools in my constituency. I have had the privilege of visiting many of them, including Pebble Brook and Booker Park, Chiltern Way Academy, and the independent Pace Centre. The work they do is awe-inspiring, and I pay tribute to their staff, who constantly strive to give the children for whom they care the best possible opportunities and experiences.

Too often, however, the families of the children with SEND feel that they are being left to fight a ferociously complicated system to get their child into those schools and ensure that they have the support they need. Thankfully, they have local support from people in a similar position, including members of the GRASPS group, which is run by volunteers in Buckinghamshire, but they have told me at length of their concerns about delays in assessments, complexity in form-filling, and then the long waits for the EHCPs about which we have heard so much this afternoon.

The team at Buckinghamshire Council and I have discussed those concerns to try to find ways in which to help, and I know that the team are determined to do so, but it is no surprise that the council has highlighted funding as a major challenge. As we have heard, the cost of SEND education can be exceptionally high, and it is not unusual for the cost of residential placements for children with the most complex and serious needs to run to hundreds of thousands of pounds a year.

The SEND Green Paper and the SEND and alternative provision improvement plan, published in March 2023, made clear the need to update the funding model. The Government are not ignorant to this, and I am pleased with their direction of travel. We have an excellent Minister to drive that forward in the months ahead. I am pleased that £10 billion of high needs funding has been allocated for the coming financial year, representing a cash-terms increase of 12%.

It should be stressed, and it has been, that high needs block funding has nearly doubled in cash terms since 2013-14, which demonstrates this Government’s commitment to helping SEND pupils and their families. However, Buckinghamshire Council fares very poorly compared with many other local authorities, with much lower allocations of funding. The cost to all local authorities of providing support for SEND pupils is increasing dramatically, both because of the number of cases and because of the complexity of need.

Locally, since 2016, there has been a 101% increase in requests for EHCPs. Since 2020, the unit costs for children’s placements have increased by 30%. As a result, Bucks Council is looking at bringing some provision in-house to try to contain some of the costs, but that cannot happen overnight. In the meantime, it must try to find the extra money.

Members from all parties will know that I have a profound interest in youth justice. Having spent many years as a youth magistrate and as a member of the Youth Justice Board, I have always been struck by the disproportionate number of young people with SEND in the criminal justice system. According to data published in 2022 by the Department for Education and the Ministry of Justice, 80% of children cautioned or sentenced for an offence have been recorded as having special educational needs at some stage—80%. That is an appalling statistic.

It cannot be morally right that so many children with SEND wind up on the wrong side of the law and, all too often, behind bars. We must do more to give children with SEND the appropriate education and training so that they have the same potential to live law-abiding lives as their peers, and we must ensure that provision for those who unfortunately end up in the youth justice system is properly tailored and funded.

I end on a positive note. Many Members of this House run an annual competition for local schoolchildren to design their Christmas cards. For the past two years, I have done something slightly different. I have gone out to local SEND schools, one each year, to ask them to produce the design for my card, and the reason is very simple. All too often, children with special educational needs are airbrushed out or considered incapable of achieving the same as their peers, but I take a different view. I want local children with special needs to be celebrated for what they achieve. I want them to be visible, and I want to give them a showcase in the local community. The simple act of getting them to design my Christmas card has enabled me to do that, and I thank the children at Booker Park School, who designed my 2023 card, and the children at Chiltern Way Academy, who did it in 2022. Both cards had excellent pictures that carried real meaning. This emphasises that there is potential in every child, and we need to approach children with special educational needs and disabilities with a spirit of optimism and positivity.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call the shadow Minister.