Funding for SEND announced

What’s happened?

• The government has been announced that SEND is going to be given £350 million funding to provide specialist support and tailored facilities.

• On Sunday 16th December The Education Secretary Damian Hinds announced that councils will receive an additional £250 million over the next two years on top of the £6 billion already provided for the high needs budget this year, to provide much needed support for children and young people with complex SEND.

• There will be an extra £100 million investment to create more specialist places in mainstream schools, colleges and special schools.

• The Education Secretary also confirms he will approve all high quality bids for free special schools in the current round of special and alternative provision free schools applications.

• The Government has also confirmed an expansion of the funding to train more educational psychologists, who are responsible for assessing children’s needs and providing tailored support as part of the Education, Health and Care needs assessment process. From September 2020 there will be a further three training rounds to support EPs

Education Secretary Damian Hinds said:

Being a parent, we all want the very best for our children. We want them to attend a school that supports them to thrive, go on to higher or further education or training, find a job that’s right for them, and to live happy and fulfilled lives.

For children with special educational needs this is no different. It is important that they have the right support in place at school – whether that is in a mainstream setting, with additional support, or in a special school.

We recognise that the high needs budget faces significant pressures and this additional investment will help local councils to manage those pressures, whilst being able to invest to provide more support.

Every school or college should be one for a young person with special educational needs; every teacher should be equipped to teach them, and families need to feel supported.

Ofsted’s HMCI Amanda Spielman said:

I welcome today’s announcement from the Department for Education, which is good news for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and their families.

Our inspections show that we still have a long way to go before children and young people with SEND are getting all the support they deserve. In too many local areas, the implementation of the 2014 SEND reforms is not living up to expectations.

We are halfway through our inspections of local areas and have just started to re-visit areas where inspectors have identified significant concerns. We will continue to give real weight to the experience of children and young people with SEND in our inspections of schools.

It is vital that this additional investment makes a much-needed difference to the quality of provision and outcomes achieved by this group of children and young people

We will have to see what real impact this has in the up and coming year! What do you think?

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