Written evidence submitted by Nexus Multi Academy Trust
(SFC0015)
To provide some context, Nexus Multi Academy Trust was established in 2016 and is a public authority with responsibility, at the time of writing, for maintaining seventeen academies, sixteen of which are either special or hospital special schools across South Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire.
1.1. Since the election of the coalition government in 2010 - beyond the wider societal context (globalisation, screentime, poverty etc) and some health-related context (understanding and diagnosis of mental health/autism/ADHD etc) - there were two primary policies which laid the (unintended) foundations for the current state of the SEN system in England: these were:
1.1.1. the focus of the then Secretary of State, the Rt. Hon Michael Gove MP, on the improvement of academic outcomes and attainment in mainstream schools;
1.1.2. and the austerity agenda, specifically the impact this had on local government resourcing.
1.2. These two policy priorities for the coalition Government – continued throughout the term of that parliament and mostly adopted by successive Conservative governments up until 2024 – have combined to create the system we have today. This was further complicated by the Children and Families Act (2014), though the act itself is not the root cause of the current system dysfunctions and its performance.
1.3. Starting with a focus on the mainstream education accountability system and how “good” performance became defined from 2010, there was an overt focus on the academic importance of curriculum, with a move away from elements such as coursework to 100% testing, which can be more challenging for some pupils and also puts a greater focus on recall rather than a broader assessment of skills. This change came into place alongside a movement toward models of high compliance/zero dissent responses of behaviour management, particularly in secondary education.
1.4. The advent of the academies system and the “sanction” of - in being found to be failing by Ofsted and therefore - being forced to become an academy by the Department for Education (DfE) typically, in the early days, into larger Trusts dominated by leaders who were in synch with new orthodoxy of school leadership (i.e. zero tolerance for poor behaviour, creeping ever more toward conformism with neo-Victorian models of repression of expression and difference) saw a major shift in the culture of many state schools. This new approach, whilst lauded for pushing outcomes in England up the Pisa rankings, has had the unintended consequence of pushing a statistically small – but also disproportionately high cost – number of learners to the margins of our mainstream system, and – all too often - out of it completely. In 2022-23, secondary schools accounted for 87% of all suspensions (primary was 11%) and 86% of all permanent exclusions (primary was 13%).
1.5. These same schools have been heralded as “high performing” by the Government’s accountability system and in Ofsted inspections, leading to a propagation of the model (either via the academy trust system, or by the self-elected evolution of practice in individual settings) and perpetuation of this approach across a majority of schools. This is not the fault of the academies system: that system was established to respond to poor performance in schools, and can and would do so, however that is defined. It is how good performance has been defined by politicians and policy makers where the issue lies.
1.6. The prospect of “reasonable adjustments” isn’t easily reconciled with the (perceived) absolute necessity of high compliance approaches to behaviour management, and the introduction of measures such as “progress 8” added further pressure on school staff and pupils to continually improve their academic progress, as this directly feeds into the accountability system. This creates a context where schools could take a view that maintaining the placement of a vulnerable learner is contra to the interests of the many, whilst the families of those pupils face a schooling experience where their child is continually “behind”. This will be less conscious, and possibly increased by the context rather than a specific intent, e.g. if you’re forced to teach to the test, then the context you have to set (even in an inclusive-values school) will be one that a number of pupils struggle with, that results in disengagement and alienation. What parent would then actively seek to sustain that, especially when the Children & Families Act places primacy on parental preference for determining their child’s school place?
1.7. This is where austerity starts to play a clear contributing role.
1.8. The real-terms reduction in school budgets for the period 2010-2017 led more schools to seek additional resource to meet the needs of vulnerable learners, and reduced the level of support within the baseline offer. The only way additional funding could be secured (though not guaranteed) is via the Education Health and Care Plan process (EHCP) - previously statements of special educational need - which therefore pushes schools down a route of medicalising a vulnerable learner as having SEN.
1.9. In turn, this places a duty on local authorities to assess need but – as a consequence of huge funding cuts – local authorities don’t have the resource to effectively discharge this duty.
1.10. Come 2014, this failure could be challenged legally by parents, and those same local authorities had even less resource to assess needs or instruct effective legal advice and representation.
1.11. Under the New Labour government, there was a national shortage in Educational Psychologists (EPs) and the Children’s Workforce Development Council (decommissioned by the Coalition in 2010 as part of the bonfire of the quangos) was raising concerns in 2009 about the strategy for training future EPs: concerns which went unheeded with the decommissioning of that agency. There are 360 fewer EPs now than there were in 2010 (when there were already concerns about the number of EPs).
1.12. Thus, the system encourages – and indeed, financially rewards – schools when pupils get a SEN diagnosis, and those left to gatekeep this - local authorities - have insufficient resource to respond to that demand. Simultaneously, the changes to how local authorities can and cannot move monies across the dedicated schools grant left a majority of them with ever-growing under-resourced High Needs Blocks, with austerity measures meaning there was no more money to address this, with the majority of any additional schools funding going into either academies or the free schools’ programmes.
1.13. Following the reforms of 2014, the advent of local area inspections by Ofsted and the CQC report that most local areas are failing in the commissioning of SEN, yet these findings lead to no effective improvement intervention from Government. All the while, under-resourced local authorities face a rising sea of tribunals, as more parents - through sheer desperation - utilise this high-cost legal route to get the provision they want for their child. As demand swells, so does the instigation of tribunals increase as local authorities are more and more overwhelmed, and so the spiral deepens.
1.14. The performance of the mainstream schools’ system at this time is wholly rooted in attainment, academic rigour and “good” behaviour. Local areas are failing to meet their SEN statutory duties, but there is no consequence from Government. The only time when the DfE intervene is when a High Needs deficit is adjudged to be of such magnitude that it cannot be managed without direct oversight from Government, the dire consequence of which are explored in the next sections of this submission.
1.15. The absence of “good system performance” being defined for SEN – in a common way across schools and local areas - is a vacuum that has become filled with financial ruin.
2.1. The offer of support for children with SEN has undoubtedly been adversely affected by the resourcing reduction of local authorities since 2010 and the restrictions placed on them in how they utilise the dedicated schools grant (DSG) locally. Once power was placed with Headteachers – via Schools Forum – to determine how DSG was used, this reduced the resource base that many councils used to fund additional inclusion services, and the variable quality of these services in conjunction with the emergence and advancement of multi academy trusts saw many of these services whither on the vine.
2.2. The majority of local authorities have – according to Ofsted and the CQC – failed to fulfil their SEN sufficiency duties, which has left many alternative provision (AP) and special school settings massively over-saturated and in a “hand-to-mouth” position, unable to resist an increase in placements in ever-tighter physical spaces, and also unable to expect full funding, given the utterly imbalanced powers that local authorities have on funding as commissioners of special and AP schools, as per the DfE published High Needs Operational Guidance.
2.3. This guidance has left special and AP schools facing real term budget reductions every year since 2015, other than in 2021, at a time when mainstream schools have been better funded year on year. This has significantly weakened the role that the state specialist sector can play, and has in turn left too many pupils placed in independent settings at eye-watering cost.
2.4. In 2017 the national spend on independent special school places was £480m. In 2024 it was £2bn. Therefore, the real terms cost of local authorities failing to full their sufficiency duty is material to the current state of the public finances. By sacrificing our state special and AP schools on the altar of unrealistic financial recovery and by failing to invest in local sufficiency, we have compounded the supply of low cost/high value placements in localities and committed the public purse to billons of pounds of expenditure to the private sector, and the funders that take their dividend from that system.
2.5. There are many mainstream schools that do truly inspirational work to support pupils and families where there are additional needs, especially in primary schools, yet the system dysfunctions outlined in the preceding section of this submission also mean more and more children are medicalised with SEN. For example, if you are a boy and born in the summer, you are almost twice as likely to be diagnosed with SEN. In terms of children with an EHCP who are in mainstream settings in spring 2024, there were just over 5,000 more children in primary than in KS3 & KS4[1]. We know that the year 6-year 7 transition is now a key point where children come into the specialist sector, but that needn’t be the case.
2.6. The Government has commissioned no “hubs” for SEN support for schools (whereas there are Hubs for Behaviour, English, Maths and Science!), and there is no defined expectation on what support services must be available locally. The additional funding put into High Needs allocations has almost always been in response to a pre-existing deficit, meaning a hole is being filled rather than a more inclusive offer being established, and that hole is never fully filled anyway, leaving a systemic deficit.
2.7. Such is the state of the tribunal system (where parents are taking legal action against local authorities, typically to have their child placed in a special school) that the DfE provided His Majesty’s Court and Tribunal Service with £14m last year. That would have funded around 175,000 more Educational Psychologists.
2.8. The only Government “support” for SEN, in response to all this, is to put accountants in to local areas with the promise of extra cash (usually often not enough to fill the deficit in place), to look at how costs can be reduced. Usually by special and AP schools having funding withheld, which in turn leaves them in a more perilous position and therefore increases the council’s need for high-cost independent placements.
2.9. To their credit, the Coalition did legislate for the establishment of parent and carer forums in all local authority areas, to provide a coordination of support, advice and voice for parents and carers of children with SEN. These fora can be powerful in exposing the lived experience locally and advocating for change.
2.10. The role of CAMHS and community heath services such as occupational therapy and speech and language therapy in the dysfunction of the system should also be examined, especially in failing to identity needs early and intervene before things escalate.
2.11. The years-long waiting lists for assessment and support means there is not merely the absence of early intervention to avoid need escalating and the learning gap widening, but perpetual despair for families and schools alike. The absence of any meaningful requirement on the NHS to fund SEN means that the term “EHCP” is also a significant misnomer.
2.12. Across our 16 special schools, we have no significant funding that comes from the NHS. Where additional funding is required to meet acute health needs, this tends to always come from already overspent council High Needs budgets, when it needn’t if the NHS played its part. Whilst this can be seen as yet another failure of local authorities to commission responsibly, health authorities are enabled by Government to look the other way and keep their hands out of their pockets.
3.1. There is only Government inaction in this regard. The Chancellor announced an extra £1bn of High Needs funding for local authorities from April 2025, when the forecast cumulative deficit at that point will be £4.6bn.
3.2. There is no cross-Government overview of the SEN crisis. The DfE are the only department that has the powers to intervene, and their interventions are solely about seeking to meet unrealistic saving targets to maintain a state of denial about the funding required to sustainably resource high needs budgets through their Delivering Better Value and Safety Valve programmes. The most recent budget announcement makes the continuation of this mentality depressingly clear. The pressure is £4.6bn, so £1bn is all that’s needed?
3.3. The current DfE intervention models of Delivering Better Value and Safety Valve are not fit for purpose. They force local authorities to breach their statutory duties (see the recent case of Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch council) and withhold funding from state special and AP schools. Neither process seeks to engage with families or schools in their work programme. It is the epitome of shadowy and underhand.
3.4. Academies may be their own admissions authority, but it is a child’s local authority that has the power to place a child with an EHCP on a school roll, and no school can remove that child (unless the child is permanently excluded). Therefore, councils need no more powers to place children with SEN, though there appear to be few examples where a council has legally challenged a school on its inclusion of these pupils.
3.5. The new Ofsted scorecard offers something in the policy pipeline to address poor inclusion practices, provided it doesn’t use attainment and progress as high-weighted measures. There is a high risk that they will.
3.6. The Government has made announcements about the intended investment in nurseries across our primary sector, but there appears to be no strategy to link this to early intervention and support for children with SEN. This is a huge opportunity that could still be taken.
3.7. Even if we were to move back to a more inclusive mainstream offer, it will take significant time to rebuild the confidence of families. However, starting afresh for new children and families entering the state education system is where we will secure a sustainable new way of working.
3.8. There is clear evidence that the allocation of these duties to local authorities has failed.
3.9. It is my submission that, in order to create a sustainable SEN system and restore confidence, Government must:
3.9.1. Review the existing mainstream schools’ accountability measures, to consider the unintended consequence and cost these have on the SEN system;
3.9.2. Carefully consider the unintended consequences that may arise with the development of the Ofsted schools’ scorecard, and remove any further contributors to poor inclusion;
3.9.3. Ensure the Department for Health & Social Care provides meaningful funding to cover the cost of SEN in local areas, and that the services they commission via NHS England are included in the holistic review of service quality and improvement;
3.9.4. Ensure that the new nursery enhancement programme has a SEN specific early intervention strand;
3.9.5. Cease the Safety Value and Delivering Better Value programmes immediately;
3.9.6. Amend the Children and Families Act to remove the tribunal route for all but exceptional cases, and consider instead having the local government ombudsman play an arbitration role, with schools given equal voice in that process to families and local authorities;
3.9.7. Consider the establishment of regional SEN commissioning agencies, with a transfer of responsibility from local authorities and integrated care boards;
3.9.8. Ensure the current level of High Needs spend is fully funded by Government, with inflationary adjustments forecast in to recognise the reality of cost commitments;
3.9.9. Review the current funding arrangements for special and AP schools, and provide an uplift of place funding (which has been static since 2013) and cease the real terms funding cuts on special and AP schools that is enabled in the High Needs Operational Guidance to give the state sector the financial security and sustainability – mirroring % increases in mainstream schools - so it can play a more active part in reducing the current dependence on high cost independent placements, which in turn provides huge cost avoidance for the state.
November 2024
[1] https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/education-health-and-care-plans#dataBlock-f990c61a-dd9b-45ed-b502-500615ca05d7-tables