Briefings and responses

Councils share the Government’s ambition of making sure every child with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) gets the high-quality support that they need. Reforms to the SEND system, set out in the Children and Families Act 2014 have, however, failed to achieve the goal of improving provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities.

Councils are particularly concerned about the proposed changes to high needs funding which will reduce council and school flexibility to make additional funding available where there are rising demand pressures for SEND support.

Councils are continuing to tell us that pressures on the High Needs funding block is one of the most serious financial challenges that they are currently dealing with and we are calling on the Government to provide councils with long-term certainty on levels of high needs funding.

There is clear evidence that where people are born into or experience poverty, it significantly impacts on their life chances.

On 28 March the Government published the ‘Opportunity for all Strong schools with great teachers for your child’ White Paper.

The LGA supports the focus on ensuring all children get the right support at the right time, particularly in the context of the impact of the pandemic and the widening attainment gap. The amount of funding made available to support education catch-up must be kept under review to ensure every child has the support they need to learn, and to support their broader development and wellbeing.

While councils have a statutory duty to ensure there is a school place for every child, they are currently not able to direct academies to expand school places or admit individual pupils. We are seeking a commitment from Government redress this discrepancy between councils’ duties and powers as soon as reasonably possible, by providing councils with sufficient backstop powers to direct academies to expand school places and admit individual pupils, within six months of the Act passing.

Councils have a crucial role to play in education, from ensuring every child has a school place to turning around struggling schools, which they demonstrated when providing vital support to schools during the pandemic.

The funding pressures facing schools are well known, with teacher and parent-led campaigns continuing to receive extensive coverage in the media. The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates schools will see a real terms cut of 4.6 per cent in schools funding between 2015 and 2019

The LGA has raised concerns that councils do not currently have the powers to fulfil their duties to ensure home schooled children are receiving a suitable education. In particular, this is because they have no powers to enter homes or to see children to satisfy themselves that this is the case.