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Cuts to school’s budgets puts further pressure on SEND pupils

by Ian Shires on 10 May, 2017

Across the country there are increasing numbers of pupils with special educational and disabilities (SEND) are at risk of being denied mainstream schooling because of Government cuts to school funding.

Figures from the Department for Education (DfE) shows that in the past four years there has been a substantial increase in the number of SEND pupils who attend a specialist school up from 5.6% in 2012 to 8.5% in 2016.

High Needs Dedicated Schools Grant has remained frozen in recent years. This has put considerable pressure on local budgets. In order to counter this pressure local councils have bridged the gap by topping up from other budgets.

Last month however, a Government consultation on high needs funding has suggested that this flexibility will no longer be available to council which will make it even more difficult to give SEND pupils the support they need. As a result, councils may not be able to fund enough places for those with the highest needs or will not be able to “top-up” provision to pupils attending mainstream schools.

The DfE has provided some extra funding since 2015/16 it has been allocated on the basis of the number of pupils rather than on the complexity of the need.

“Here in Walsall we are seeing school budgets being reduced across the board by up to £19 million” said the Leader of the Liberal Democrats on Walsall Council. “This combined with the fact that funding in this sector has historically been below what was needed means that it’s going to be difficult to meet the needs of the increasing number of SEND pupils.”

Theresa May’s Tories can find money to fund divisive Free Schools and Grammar Schools yet continues with their obsession to cut funding to the rest of the State School system “All this is being drowned out by the noise being created by the right wing media about Brexit giving the Tories the opportunity to bury bad news” said Ian.

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