SEND Provision and Funding

Tom Randall Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Tom Randall (Gedling) (Con)]

The Conservatives’ record in education over the last 13 years has been very good. From phonics and academies to free schools and the recent news that the total core schools budget will be at its highest ever level in the next financial year— £59.6 billion—there is much to be proud of. However, the story is not universally good. When I visit schools in my Gedling constituency, I always ask the headteacher at the end of my visit, “If I could wave a magic wand and solve one thing for you, what would it be?” The almost unanimous response—specifically of primary heads—is about improving SEND provision. I therefore congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Sir David Davis) and the Backbench Business Committee for making this important debate possible.

I welcome the news that between 2022 and 2025, there will be an extra £2.6 billion to support local authorities to deliver new places and improve existing provision for children with SEN. The f40 group, which we have heard much about, has produced information showing the high-needs block funding per pupil allocations by local authority, which shows that Westminster and Camden are at the top of the table—Camden gets more than £2,500 per pupil—but Nottinghamshire is fourth from bottom, at about £1,000. Now. I appreciate that there can be various regional factors—London weightings and so forth—but in 2023-24 Nottinghamshire has received £7.4 million less in funding compared with Worcestershire, and £20 million less than Warwickshire. So although I acknowledge the significant uplift in funding in the last four years, Nottinghamshire still has the poorest funding per head compared to neighbours.

Nottinghamshire saw an increase in education, health and care plans of just over 12% in 2021 and just over 11% in 2022, in line with the national annual increase of 11%, but the lower funding levels increase pressure on mainstream settings to meet the needs of children with complex special educational needs and disabilities, and the pressure on school budgets combined with the increase in levels of complex needs means that schools are struggling to fund the notional SEND allocation per child required before they request additional top-up funding.

We heard earlier from the leader of Nottinghamshire County Council, my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley). I applaud his work at the county council to increase high-quality special school and alternative provision places. He outlined that there are plans in place or in development for 494 places, but, with a recent capacity survey suggesting that 657 will be required by September 2027, there is still the risk of a shortfall.

My hon. Friend raised the subject of SEN transport, which is a significant issue in Nottinghamshire. It is a reasonably large county, and SEN transport expenditure has increased significantly, from £7.6 million in 2018 to over £12.4 million by 2023. That cost increase has been driven by: increased pupil numbers requiring specialist provision; a lack of local specialist provision so travel is required; increased journey times; and significant inflationary pressures, with fuel costs increasing by 40% in the last 18 months and wages by 10%. All that has meant that the average retendering contract for SEN transport has increased by between 10% and 35%. Therefore, although I welcome the fact that the Government have met their inflation target—they have halved inflation over the last year, and inflation is coming down—those cost pressures obviously remain.

I will also highlight the time that it can take to process funding applications. Nottinghamshire has a lot of stand-alone infant schools—I went to one myself: Pinewood Infant School in Arnold in my Gedling constituency—and one issue that can be faced is that, by the time the funding has come through, the child has already left the infant school. Nottinghamshire County Council is doing much work to streamline funding for children in the transition from nursery setting to school, with a particular focus on stand-alone infant schools, but I would welcome further work by the DFE to help make that process better.

The f40 Group is campaigning for equitable funding for all schools to deliver high-quality education. I appreciate that some of its asks are big and, with billions of pounds required, that will not be resolved overnight, but I do ask whether the process can be streamlined and made quicker so that we get the money to where it is needed. There is also serious work to be done to address the regional variations that mean that areas such as Nottinghamshire have been left out.

I do not intend this to be a critical speech. As I said at the outset, the Conservatives have a good story to tell from the “Right Support, Right Time, Right Place” Command Paper to the doubling of high-needs funding since 2015 and investment in new special schools, but there is more work to be done on levelling up in this area.