It’s fair to say that the secretary of state’s call for ‘a bit of patience’ in her 15 October webinar was met with less than universal celebration. A month on, policy is beginning to emerge with the appointment of expert advisors to the DfE.
No one denies that the SEND system is broken, despite daily miracles performed in the sector by leaders and practitioners who do so with a stoicism that would make Marcus Aurelius blush. (More on Rome later.)
Everywhere you look, it would appear that we need to ‘take a step back, ‘reflect’ on something or other and ‘fix the foundations’, or the roof, or both. It’s bewildering.
It’s also wrong. Make no mistake, our current collective beard-stroking is failing a great deal of young people.
Sometimes, solutions don’t need to be agonised over. In that spirit, below are my top six thoughts on filling the holes in budgets and provision and buying time for the experts to do what they do best.
None of these ideas should be surprising. They are being enacted now by a growing number of inspiring leaders who are focused on finding solutions to meet the needs of children and communities – not just whiling away their time with endless focus groups and think tanks.
Things can actually get worse
DfE has commissioned ten case studies on its safety valve programme, due in June 2025. By that time, I estimate between £193 and £325 million will have been spent, based on research I presented to the previous government.
Safety valve was ill-conceived, badly drafted and poorly executed. It needs to be cancelled. For good or ill, Michael Gove took mere days to can Building Schools for the Future. Why waste another year weighing a pig that has long since started to smell distinctly off?
Overspent on the high-needs budget (HNB)? How about bankruptcy?
Such is the parlous state of school finances and the dysfunction in many local authorities that schools and academies are being forced to initiate legal proceedings against commissioners simply to get what the children in their care are entitled to.
So poor are many EHCPs that they are likely to be thrown out immediately. Others are drafted better, but then simply make the case on behalf of the school who now have tools that draw a direct line from the children and families act to section F of the EHCP.
Having reviewed hundreds of them and, in one case, reviewed all of the EHCPs across two schools, the picture is bleak. Those two schools are under-funded by up to £750,000 a year according to the very documents the commissioners are using to calculate top-up fees.
This is in a local authority that has hitherto proudly announced its HNB is in the black and has recently demurred to an additional £1 million of funding for the entire school estate. It doesn’t take a genius to do the maths.
With the whole world crumbling…
Some say they remember a kinder, gentler relationship between commissioners and providers. Of course, there is always an element of rose tinting in these kinds of statements, so I offer you a tale of two cities.
In one, an increasingly fractious relationship is characterised by ever-spikier communications between civic hall and schools. “We have no money, so make do,” is the general tone.
But little Johnny with ASD is probably not very bothered about the reasons why his LA going broke. If he was, he would have plenty of time to ponder matters on his two-hour-a-day taxi ride to the distant ‘Hogwarts lite’ he now attends. The only thing that travels further is the excessive profit that is extracted for his placement.
In another, the LA commissioner and a MAT CEO are in talks about the possibility of bringing a mothballed LA building back to life as (whisper it) an independent SEND school.
Now, before pearls are clutched too hard, this independent school will save the LA up to £50,000 per place per year. Not only that, but it will be brought on stream within months, and following a model Ofsted has already described as ‘a haven’.
To paraphrase my favourite film, this could be the start of beautiful friendships. I’m currently working on similar projects across the country with the full support of LAs who will be saving money well before any research is published that confirms this.
Bridget Phillipson would be welcome to visit.
Pragmatism, not ideology
We need to take politics out of education, say would-be reformers. Best of luck. While we wait for Godot to arrive, we should take a leaf out of the book of the enlightened commissioners who have long realised that if the focus is placed unswervingly on the needs of the child, it is balanced by wider societal needs.
I recognise that bashing independent schools makes good copy and red meat for the base. However, as one safety valve LA is compelled to reduce spend on independent schools, it’s immediately hamstrung by having one of the key levers for improved outcomes and reduced costs set in direct competition with their agreement.
I’ll leave aside the fact that parliament recognises academies as independent schools and will refer you back to my earlier comment on poor drafting.
What market?
I’m no economist, but even I recognise that if demand outstrips supply in an area where statutory obligations apply, unscrupulous operators will be unscrupulous.
I presented evidence from one safety valve LA to government in February showing how a focus on the fourth quintile of need and bearing down on profiteering providers could save £1.2 million a year. Scale this up, add my Casablanca example and the patient will start to show signs of recovery.
In the last days of the last government, DfE set up a Market Interventions Group, charged with challenging the excesses of broken markets. Plans to curb “excessive profit” in children’s social care were announced this week, so it appears the new government has an appetite for this sort of intervention.
Surprise, surprise! A number of the big players in children’s social care are the same firms that are doing very nicely off the backs of commissioners of special education (and ultimately taxpayers). How they must have chuckled when the VAT exemption on EHCPs was correctly applied.
Having done this research, I’d say profits will be in tax havens quicker that it took me to work through the Byzantine corporate structure of Mid Cos, BidCos, TopCos etc.
When you do this, as Schools Week has, you start to see the same people and companies, delivering the same result: money taken away from kids and placed in investors’ pockets.
Back to Rome
One MP told me that their LA was so broken that doing anything different could not make things worse, but doing nothing could.
While I would encourage government to focus on long-term solutions for SEND, I would beg that the commissioners and providers who are making a daily difference as outlined above are encouraged to continue to do this and are given the tools to do the job.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, but fiddling while it burns is helping no one. Giving commissioners and providers the freedom to practice agnostic autonomy may just mean there is a sector left to save.
Your thoughts