‘Call to arms’ in fight for specialist schooling
Councils warn region is busting budget by £123m
A SENIOR Yorkshire council chief will issue a “call to arms” today over special needs support for young people amid warnings of unsustainable pressure on services and rising overspends totalling £123m for the region’s authorities.
An inclusion summit in York, to be attended by council leaders and executives from across the North, is to look at challenges around special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).
More must be done to protect the most vulnerable, Richard Flinton, the chief executive of host authority North Yorkshire County Council is to say, calling on government to urgently meet with council leaders.
The warning comes as the Government today announced thousands of new school places are being created for children with special educational needs or those facing additional challenges in mainstream education.
In total 37 special free schools and two alternative provision free schools are to open, including five in Yorkshire and the Humber. The Department for Education says this will create more than 500 new places in the region.
Mr Flinton will today issue a “call to arms” over support for young people and their families as demand rises amidst a funding formula “too rooted in historic spend”.
“The pressure caused by this demand is not sustainable,” he is to say, dismissing a one-off allocation of £350m in Government funding as nothing more than a “sticking plaster” .
“We urgently need Department for Education, Ministers and officials to sit down with representatives from local government to look at how we can, together, make the case for more
funding and how, together, we can make the system work more effectively.”
Today, as it emerges the collective high needs overspending for the region since SEND reforms were introduced in 2014 has reached £123m, Mr Flinton is to call for a unified strategy.
Urgent action is needed to make a joint approach to the Treasury, he is to say, as representatives from 39 authorities gather in Yorkshire for the conference.
Across the North, he adds, there are countless individuals undertaking a “heroic task” in doing the best they can for the most vulnerable.
“We now need a national call to arms to help them and to enable young people and their families to face their difficult circumstances with more hope and with more support.”
CABINET MINISTERS like Education Secretary Damian Hinds are emblematic of this country’s exasperation with the damaging policy vacuum on so many issues. He can find the time to tour the TV studios to defend Theresa May over Brexit, but he is reluctant to meet headteachers to discuss the financial pressures that they continue to face – and he has done little to address concerns about the cost of teaching pupils with special educational needs.
A recurring theme in The Yorkshire Post ,it would probably be more productive for Mr Hinds to attend today’s summit in York to discuss the crisis – and the longterm challenges which remain in spite of the Government making an extra £350m available as a one-off payment. An acknowledgement that the issue is a genuine one, the fact of the matter is that local council budgets are still being squeezed as demand for specialist support reaches record levels.
And while Mr Hinds thinks he is being helpful to the Prime Minister by being so loyal, he is, in fact, doing nothing to help all those parents who are enduring a living nightmare because schools, councils and agencies simply don’t have the resources, or staff, to give their children the support that they require on a daily basis in order to assist with their learning and behaviour.
Like all those waiting for the Government to reveal its blueprint for social care, this is another issue that has very little to do with the outcome of the Brexit process. And, as such, it is even more remiss that Ministers like Mr Hinds are using Brexit as an excuse for their own inaction and inertia. Try telling that, Secretary of State, to those families at the mercy of current arrangements.