SEND Funding

Iqbal Mohamed Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) on securing this important debate. Given the limited time that has been allocated, I will speak about the state of SEND in my area and then suggest how the Government can address some of these challenges.

The Dewsbury and Batley constituency sits in the authority of Kirklees, which ranks very low in terms of funding per child in the high-needs block of the dedicated schools grant. According to recent reports, Kirklees is the second worst funded council for high-needs funding per capita. Kirklees has nearly 9,600 disabled children and young people between the ages of nought and 24. Since 2016, there has been a real-terms spending cut of £717,000 on services for disabled children in Kirklees. Given the lack of funding, it is not surprising that in June 2022 a joint SEND inspection by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission reported two priority areas of action, which, as far as I am aware, are still unresolved. Without the necessary funding, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the council to address these challenges.

In Kirklees, one in eight EHCPs were processed within the 20-week legal timescale, compared with the national average of 50%, making it one of the worst rates nationally. Kirklees is part of the Department for Education’s safety valve programme, which helps local authorities with their SEND deficits, but that may pressure councils to limit EHCPs, adding barriers for families seeking essential support for their children.

I completely agree that the Government’s plans for major SEND reforms are necessary and overdue. However, current rumours and media leaks have alarmed many families. The Disabled Children’s Partnership, which represents 130-plus charities, royal colleges and parent groups and supports early intervention, has warned that reforms must not disrupt current placements or support arrangements; they must not remove EHCPs for children with complex or unmet needs; they must not abolish the SEND tribunal, which is a vital legal safeguard; they must not remove support after the age of 18 before young people are ready; and they must not redefine SEND in ways that narrow eligibility.

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[Jenny Riddell-Carpenter]

I could not agree more with the right hon. Gentleman, which is why I and so many Members are passionate about this issue. Those who cannot articulate or fight for themselves need people to stand up and fight for them.

In many discussions I have had, I have worked with my constituents and with schools to come up with six key recommendations that we think will be innovative. We know there is a funding issue, and I welcome the Government’s investment and commitment to that. However, we need to relook at how we deliver special educational needs. Education, care and health plans are just one part of the problem, but fixing those will not fix the situation that parents are facing.

A school in Saxmundham closed down last summer, because of the declining population in that area, two years after more than £1 million was spent on its SEND unit. It is a great facility whose footprint could facilitate primary and secondary education. I have been urging the Government to look at that— I have written to the Minister, and I will continue to urge the Government to look at that provision and take it forward.

We need a national conversation about SEND and about funding. I welcome Members from across the House talking about the need to bring the voices of parents and young students to that national conversation. We must hear from them why it is failing, and how adversarial the system has become.

[Iqbal Mohamed]

Statistics published today by the Government show that there are more than 482,000 children with ECHPs but 1.284 million children without ECHPs who require SEND support. Although the £750 million is welcome, does the hon. Member agree that it is a drop in the ocean and that the Government need to invest more?

[Jenny Riddell-Carpenter]

Perhaps the hon. Member will agree with what I am about to say, which is that, yes, funding is part of the issue, but we need to look at the entire system to solve it at the scale that is needed.

In rural areas—the right hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness spoke about this at the beginning of the debate—the issues are different to those in urban areas. There are declining populations in many of my primary schools. One primary school has just 15 students and spare classrooms, because the population does not match the capacity. We have capacity within those schools. I have put forward a recommendation, which has been supported in principle by my county council, that where we have declining populations in rural areas, we could operate with a special educational needs unit alongside mainstream provision, acting separately but within the same infrastructure. That SEND unit could bid for separate funding, and have a separate, wider catchment area than the primary school.

What is incredibly exciting about that idea is that the provision does not need to stop in year 6. We know that small, cute primary schools with tiny populations have a huge challenge with students moving from year 6 into huge class sizes in secondary school in year 7. If we were to go ahead with the proposal, there is no reason why the SEND unit in a primary school could not hold students in years 7 and 8, enabling a much more gradual transition to a secondary school setting. That is something I have been pushing passionately. I have written a report about it, which I published in my constituency. I am having loads of conversations with my schools, and I will continue to have a conversation with the Government. I welcome everyone’s contributions today.

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[Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (LD)]

Schools in my constituency are among the lowest-funded in the country, and there is a lack of resource for early intervention work before children get to the point of needing SEND support or an EHCP, which means that more children will need a higher level of intervention later. It is a vicious circle. The lack of money to act early means that more money must be transferred from the schools block to the high-needs block, reducing still further the funding for early intervention.

South Gloucestershire is one of the local authorities that entered into a safety-valve agreement with the previous Government. It faces a cliff edge when that agreement ends next April, and as yet there is no certainty about what comes next. A great deal of work has been done by the council and schools working in SEND clusters, but the deficit has continued to increase. The agreement was signed pre-covid—we all know about the impact that the pandemic had on demand for additional support—and as a result the targets in the agreement are completely unachievable. Safety-valve agreements have not worked. Will the Government write off those historical deficits and find a new fairer funding formula?

I support the Government’s focus on inclusion, early intervention and preventive support to make that possible for more children. However, we need to recognise that there are children and young people already in the system who did not get that support, and schools need the funding to support them now. One of the reasons for the historical deficit in south Gloucestershire is the lack of specialist places locally, which has resulted in high numbers of expensive out-of-area placements. Those are bad for children, who would be better off being educated in their local community, so that they did not face excessive travel or need a residential place, and they are bad for the school budget.

[Iqbal Mohamed]

The hon. Member makes a really important point about early intervention. The current funding models respond only to high-level need and EHCPs, which leads to an over-reliance on costly EHCPs and new special school places. Does she agree that we should look to allocate a ringfenced proportion of the high-needs funding to early intervention in mainstream schools?

[Claire Young]

That is one approach, but we need to ensure that it does not take away from the high-needs approach. The point is that we have to fund both early intervention and the high-level needs that have resulted from the lack of early intervention.

The previous Government declined to fund an additional 200 special school placements when they signed the safety-valve agreement. When I met the Minister for School Standards, she did so too, saying that the focus is on providing places in the mainstream. Increased inclusion is a sound ongoing policy, but pupils cannot make the switch overnight. We need a fairer distribution of capital funding as well as revenue funding.

Another issue with SEND funding is the notional £6,000. To give one example, a headteacher locally told me that more than 60% of their allocation goes on the high number of children with EHCPs they have on roll, leaving less than 40% to support all the other children on the record of need. School funding does not recognise that there can be great disparities between communities and schools, even in the same local authority area. Some acquire a reputation for being good at supporting those with additional needs and suffer financial consequences, and some communities in an authority have greater need than others. The formula for distributing SEND funding and more general schools funding does not reflect that, and it means that schools in different parts of the country with similar cohorts are treated very differently.

Workplace Pay Gaps

Iqbal Mohamed Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)]

The happiest of new years to all. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Roger. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler) on securing this important debate.

Over 1,400 years ago, Islam placed a strong emphasis on justice and fairness in all aspects of life, including the workplace. The principle of equal pay for equal work aligns with Islamic teachings that advocate for equity, justice and human dignity. Several hadiths and Koranic verses highlight the importance of fair treatment and appropriate remuneration for employees. Islamic principles also stress that wage disparities based on race, gender, colour or nationality are unjust and contradict the core values of Islam and humanity.

In more recent times, it is remarkable that nearly a century after women gained equal rights to vote in this country, and half a century since the introduction of the Equal Pay Act 1970, significant gaps remain in pay for women—especially women from minority ethnic backgrounds—and for those with disabilities. I therefore welcome the measures in the Employment Rights Bill as an important step in the right direction to redress this wrong through proposals to extend reporting requirements on employers and for employers to develop and publish equality action plans, including measures to address the pay gap. However, as hon. Members have stated, action plans on their own are not enough; they must be implemented and enforced.

I would like the Government to provide further clarification on two areas. I note the findings in the report by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development for 2022-23 that nearly a fifth of large employers with more than 250 employees said that they had not carried out gender pay gap reporting, despite its being a requirement for all businesses with 250 employees or more in England, Scotland and Wales. Enforcement of the reporting regulations is a responsibility of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that sufficiently robust measures are in place to ensure that employers meet their reporting requirements, as well as ensuring the enforcement of the implementation of action plans?

I also note the TUC’s recommendation that the same reporting requirements be extended to businesses with 50 employees or more. Can the Minister explain why the Bill confines itself to businesses with 250 employees or more? Why does it not seek to cast the net wider? Taking comprehensive steps to address the gender, ethnicity and disability pay gaps is a moral and legal imperative that the Government must address in full, once and for all.

SEND Provision: Autism and ADHD

Iqbal Mohamed Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for School Standards (Catherine McKinnell)]

The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Pippa Heylings) ended with the words of Desmond Tutu, and I could not agree more. I congratulate her on securing this debate on an incredibly important subject, and I congratulate hon. Members on their valuable contributions to it. I know that, as a former teacher, she is really aware of the critical role that education plays in breaking down barriers to opportunity, and how vital it is that we get our education and health services right to support the most vulnerable in our society. She described incredibly eloquently and powerfully the difference that good, inclusive education provision can make, and the significant challenges in providing it. She also mentioned the challenges that many children face at transition points, which can undermine some of the incredible work that teachers are performing up and down the country, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds South West and Morley (Mr Sewards) rightly pointed out.

Like others present, the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire will have been inundated with letters and emails from concerned families in her constituency. I am sure she has been helping them to navigate the incredibly challenging special educational needs and disabilities system. So many of us are faced with this issue, which is why we need to reform the system. It is a priority for the Government. We want all children, regardless of where they are in the country, to receive the right support to succeed in their education and lead happy, healthy and productive lives. In far too many cases, we have simply lost the confidence of families that children with special educational needs and disabilities will be supported, because they are being failed by every measure.

Despite high needs funding for children and young people with very complex special educational needs and disabilities rising to higher and higher levels, the system is simply not delivering the outcomes that those children deserve, so we desperately need to reform the system. Our message to families is that we are committed to improving the SEND system and regaining their confidence.

[Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)]

I completely agree with the Minister’s comments. Part of ensuring that we provide the correct support to children is ensuring that the education, health and care plan assessment process is effective. I was told by a charity worker in my constituency of Dewsbury and Batley that 95% of appeals in Kirklees against a conclusion that SEND support is not needed are successful. Does she agree that this is a terrible waste of council resources, and that EHCP assessments must be done properly and got right the first time, so that children can be given support as soon as possible?

[Catherine McKinnell]

I absolutely recognise the challenge the hon. Gentleman has outlined, but it very much speaks to the point I was making, which is that we have published independently commissioned insights that suggest that if the education system as a whole was extensively improved, and if we had much better early intervention, which the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire rightly referred to, and better resourcing within mainstream schools, that could lead to tens of thousands more children and young people having their needs met without an education, health and care plan. Their needs would be met within a mainstream system and with their peers, without needing a specialist placement. Clearly, we need specialist places for children with the most complex needs, but to ensure we have those places, we need to improve inclusivity and expertise within mainstream schools, while ensuring that those special schools and places can cater to children with the most complex needs.

I come back to the hon. Lady’s point about transition points for young people and how important it is for the whole system to be reformed. It is not good enough to reform just part of it, and for that great work to then be undone when a child or young person moves on to a new educational setting that does not provide the right support and environment for them. My point is that this situation is huge and complex. There is not a magic wand, and there is no overnight quick fix, but we are determined to change it, and we cannot do it alone. We need to work in partnership to achieve this.

Home-to-School Transport: Children with SEND

Iqbal Mohamed Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd December 2024 Westminster Hall

[Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark, and I thank the hon. Member for Thurrock for securing this important debate. In my constituency of Dewsbury and Batley, more than 300 pupils of sixth-form age with SEND are eligible to have their costs covered by the local authority. Unfortunately, council budget to cover their costs has just been slashed by £1.6 million. The result is that families will have to cover the shortfall themselves. That picture is repeated up and down the country because, as the National Audit Office warns, the current system of funding is unsustainable as a result of the crisis in local government funding. The situation will only get worse when we consider that the number of children in England with an EHCP has more than doubled over the past decade, and we can expect it to continue to rise.

I welcome plans to improve existing provision and build a more integrated system that includes the NHS, but we also need the funding streams to ensure that SEND children from all socioeconomic backgrounds can access improved services. If the Government listened to the teaching unions, local authorities and families who are calling for extra SEND funding, and for councils’ high-needs deficits to be written off, that would be a good start.