Schools support children with a “wide range” of needs, but “don’t always know what they are”, a survey by the children’s commissioner has found.
The report from Dame Rachel de Souza’s office also found secondary schools are “more concerned about the funding of these external services than their own funding”.
de Souza last year used her statutory powers to demand information from all schools in England for the first time. 18,869 schools and colleges responded.
Here’s five things we learned.
1. Schools underestimate needs
The report found that although children had a “wide range of additional needs outside of the classroom”, schools “don’t always know what they are”.
Six in 10 mainstream schools could not report on exactly how many children had experienced bereavement, 62 per cent could not say how many lived in unsuitable accommodation and 43 per cent did not know exactly whether their children had a parent or carer in prison.
In some cases, it was “clear, that at a national level, schools’ estimates of the number of pupils with a particular need may not match with the reality of children’s lives”.
For example, there are almost 95,000 children with a parent in prison. Schools estimated the figure to be closer to 40,000. And while there are around 113,000 children in kinship care nationally, schools put this at just over 28,000.
Schools also “aren’t being given clear information about when children are on mental health waiting lists.
“Schools estimated that 130,000 children were on waiting lists for mental health support. In reality, 320,000 were waiting for support from CAMHS at the end of the year in March 2024.”
2. Leaders worry about problems beyond the school gate
Seventy per cent of primary schools and 78 per cent of secondary schools raised child and adolescent mental health services as a top four concern, while more than half of schools mentioned child safety online as being in their top four.
More secondary schools are worried about the funding of wider services than they are about their own funding, with over half of schools viewing funding of wider services as a top four concern.
The report found schools worried most about issues where they need help from other services.
3. Concerns about attendance and SEND
Attendance was cited as a top concern by 63 per cent of secondary and 44 per cent of primary schools, while the experience and progress of children with SEND was cited by 53 per cent of primary and 40 per cent of secondary schools.
Sixty-nine per cent of primary and 81 per cent of secondary schools perceived the availability of local services was a barrier to providing additional support.
The vast majority of schools said availability of funding was a barrier, while more than seven in 10 mentioned overall staff capacity.
For implementing EHCPs, “the main barrier in both primary (69 per cent) and secondary schools (72 per cent) was funding not matching need, with a lack of specialist staffing cited as the second biggest barrier”.
4. Leaders want more support staff
The survey asked schools whether they employed staff in certain “support roles”, such as mental health counsellors, school nurses, family liaison officers, speech and language therapists and educational psychologists.
Secondary schools had more such roles than primary schools (an average of 2.9, compared to 1.4 in primary schools. More than a third of primaries did not have any such roles, compared to under one in 10 secondaries. Of those without such roles, most schools (75 per cent) said they wanted them.
Forty-two per cent of primary schools and 82 per cent of secondary schools provided a mental health counsellor, 44 per cent of primary schools and 68 per cent of secondary schools have provision of school nurses.
5. External provision raises cost and quality questions
“Many schools” reported that support given to pupils was via external provision.
The report said this raised “potential questions about the cost, quality and consistency of provision, the commissioning structures and processes of schools, and the level of regulation, control and oversight of provision”.
Thirty per cent of secondary schools had external provision for their mental health counsellors.
Schools are “often doing what they can to fill gaps left by the withdrawal of other services – particularly from local authorities, and with long waiting lists for some health services – but often that appears to have little direction or strategic oversight”.
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