Written evidence submitted by Natspec

(SFC0033)

About Natspec

Natspec represents 132 specialist further education (FE) colleges, which provide education and training for young people aged 16 to 25 with learning difficulties and/or disabilities. There are nearly 9,000 such learners in 2024/25, all of whom have education health and care plans (EHCPs) and are funded by DfE and their local authorities (LAs) through the high needs funding system. Natspec also provides training for professionals across the FE sector to improve outcomes for all learners with SEND in FE, and is a DfE Centre for Excellence for SEND.

Natspec’s area of expertise is the SEND system as it affects those aged 16 to 25, transitions from school to college, SEND in FE, and transitions out of education into employment and independence. There are over 150,000 young people aged 16 to 25 with EHCPs, 27% of the total, yet their interests, and the issues affecting FE providers, have been neglected in studies, reviews and consultations that have taken place over the last ten years.

In this response, as in previous evidence to DfE, Ofsted, the Education Select Committee, the National Audit Office, and others, Natspec has provided examples of the differences in the SEND system between schools and colleges. It is essential that recommendations made by the Committee consider these differences, and do not impose solutions on the further education system that are designed to fix the SEND system in schools.

We have organised our response according to the three themes set out in the call for evidence:

1 Performance of the system

2 The overall picture of support available and outcomes achieved for those with SEN

3 Government action to create a sustainable SEN system and restore confidence

1. Performance of the system

In 2014, the SEND reforms aimed to create a unified 0-25 system. Multiple failings in the system have been identified by the Education Select Committee Inquiry in 2019, the NAO Inquiry and PAC report in 2019-20, the SEND review, the SEND and AP improvement plan, and most recently the ISOS report, commissioned by the Local Government Association and County Councils’ Network and the National Audit Office’s October 2024 report.

However, the whole 0 to 25 age range has not been sufficiently analysed, nor has the failure to create a seamless and supportive system throughout. Previous reviews and inquiries have instead been led by the needs of school-aged children and based on data relating to 5- to 16-year-olds. Early years and FE, and the transition out of education into adult life, have attracted very little attention. The ISOS report even claims its solutions for 5- to 16-year-olds could be usefully applied across post-16, despite admitting, ‘we do not have the data available for post-16'.

There are fewer data sources available on 16- to 25-year-olds with SEND than on 5- to 16-year-olds and the data that does exist does not provide a full or accurate picture (particularly in the case of outcomes). It is possible, however, to analyse some key metrics which demonstrate that the FE and school landscapes are quite distinct, each face different challenges and inevitably, therefore, different solutions are needed.

Cost of provision: disproportionately low spend on post-16

An example of this is the spiralling costs and the inability of budgets to keep pace with the increase in the number of children and young people requiring support – often cited as a symptom of system failure.

The NAO reports that “spending on independent providers has increased” which is true for schools but not in FE, where specialist post-16 settings have seen a decrease in top-up funding over the past 5 years, from roughly £50,000 per place in 2016-17 to under £35,000 per place in 2022-23, according to LA S251 returns.

In terms of the total cost of post-16 provision, post 16 settings have routinely received a disproportionately low amount of high needs budget. Figure 3 in the NAO report reports that FE settings were allocated just £1billion from the £10.6billion high needs budget, representing less than 10% of the total budget despite over 150,000 16- to 25-year-olds with EHCPs, representing over 27% of the total, and over 200,000 more students with SEND in FE unfunded by the high needs budget.

For FE, the cost of provision has been disproportionately low, and cost per place for those in specialist FE has declined rather than increased. FE providers have been operating under intense pressure and now desperately require a more proportionate balance of available budgets.

2. Support available and outcomes achieved

The balance of mainstream/specialist provision: already 90% in mainstream FE

The previous government’s SEND and AP Improvement Plan sought to address the increasing number of children and young people being educated in specialist, rather than mainstream settings. The new government has also made it clear that it intends to reverse the trend away from specialist education. There is an assumption being made that this trend, and the need to reverse it, applies across the entire 0-25 SEND system.

The NAO reports that 45% of school-aged pupils with EHC plans were in special schools, but again it does not include the data for FE settings. Of post-16 EHCP-holders placed in FE, just 10% are in specialist colleges - and this percentage has hardly changed since 2014.

Support is required to maintain this balance, and to encourage more partnership working between specialist and mainstream colleges. Natspec and the Association of Colleges have been working closely to examine the benefits of such partnerships. Our 2022 project report contains examples and our report on the benefits of partnerships includes recommendations to enable them to flourish.

The high proportion of EHCP holders already in GFE colleges points to a need to support the FE system to maintain, rather than change, the existing balance. The FE landscape has achieved an inclusive balance of provision despite the system, and now needs the resource to ensure that partnerships between different types of provision, and training / development opportunities for staff, are supported and enhanced.

Outcomes: more nuanced analysis required

The NAO report uses only one main measure to conclude that “since 2019, there has been no consistent improvement in outcomes for children and young people with SEN”. This is a comparison, between those with and without SEN, of the proportion at Key Stage 4 in sustained education, apprenticeship or employment after leaving 16 to 18 study. This is a crude measure that does not account for the starting points of young people, the progress they make during their journey through further education, or the savings made to the public purse by those who acquire skills towards independence. A reliance on one data source demonstrates that far more analysis is required to fully assess success – using metrics such as the proportion of learners with EHCPs that achieve their learning aims in FE, including non-accredited learning and aims relating to all preparing for adulthood outcomes, and having a more granular assessment of destinations, including enterprise and self-employment, independent or supported living for those that might otherwise have needed full time care, or reducing levels of support for those in either care or employment destinations.

Future planning of provision: no equivalent of “state special school” in FE. Changes in college numbers and size are more relevant than movement between types of provider.

The NAO report highlights the changes in the proportions of children attending state special schools (dropping from 44% to 36%) and independent schools (increasing from 7% to 9%), and concludes that DfE needs to better understand “what causes these movements, spaces available and what settings work best for whom” to plan future capacity.

Whilst a better understanding of pupil movements between mainstream and different types of special school is essential for those aged 5 to 16, there is no equivalent of “state special school” in FE, and therefore no equivalent problem regarding different types of institution. Moreover, the proportion of young people attending specialist FE settings has remained steady at around 10%, indicating that a mainstream/specialist balance of 90%/10% is appropriate long term.

The more important issue for FE relating to future planning of provision is the number, size and location of specialist FE colleges, and how this relates to the location of GFE colleges. In 2015, Area Reviews of GFE Colleges were introduced, leading to a restructure of the post-16 FE sector, with multiple mergers resulting in fewer, larger GFE colleges. Meanwhile, policy drivers of the SEND reforms have led to the opposite effect for specialist FE colleges, with the creation of over 40 new, smaller specialist colleges at local level since 2017, shown in the table below:

Natspec recommends that a thorough assessment of capacity within the specialist and mainstream FE system is undertaken, including recommendations on the optimum number and size of specialist college. This should be separate to any analysis of schools, to create a full understanding of future capacity within the whole 0-25 system.

3. Government action to create a sustainable SEN system and restore confidence

Government action has included the SEND review, the SEND and AP Improvement plan, and LA intervention programmes such as Safety Valve and Delivering Better Value. All these focus on addressing the pressure on budgets and the rising numbers educated outside mainstream schools. Whilst initiatives such as national standards and digitising EHCPs might help those aged 16 to 25 as well as school-aged children, there are very few – if any – solutions aimed at the specific problems faced by FE. There has been an emphasis on initiatives such as supported internships and Access to Work passport. Whilst these programmes are positive, the numbers on supported internships represent less than 2% of those with EHCPs in FE, and there has been no attention on the much larger groups on study programmes.

To restore confidence across the whole of the 0-25 SEND system, government needs to do more to address the very specific issues that affect the FE sector, for example:

• Meeting the statutory duty to review and amend EHCP plans by the 31 March deadline on transition between school and FE. This deadline is not monitored and therefore routinely missed – Natspec data shows that in some years, up to 90% of learners moving to specialist college have not had their places confirmed by the deadline. Government should investigate why so many LAs routinely fail to meet the statutory deadline, specifically monitoring those with the highest percentage of unconfirmed places by the end of March, with a view to addressing barriers to timely decision-making and enforcing the deadline for future years.
• There should be a greater focus on post-16/post-19 strategic planning, with a clear expectation that LAs will need to work together at a regional level to plan how to meet low incidence needs, and a recognition that some highly specialised provision may need to be accessed at a national level.
• Housing and employment options for college leavers with SEND are a particularly common difficulty. This has resulted in pressure to keep young people in education even when their educational outcomes have been met. There is an opportunity to examine and extend the role of the mayoral and combined authorities to work more closely with specialist and mainstream colleges on planning for disability housing, travel and employment.
• Support for those with SEND but no EHCP: in schools, there is a SEN support fund. Colleges have no dedicated funding to support these students. A review of the 16 to 19 national funding formula is required, to create a fund and to review programme weightings for learners on SEND courses.
• High needs funding in colleges: a localised system of funding is not suited to FE, where non high needs students are funded through a national formula. Colleges work with multiple LAs, significantly increasing time and money spent on bureaucracy. Differences in the place planning process between GFE and specialist colleges hinders partnership working. Government needs to create a consistent mechanism to agree place funding, based on ILR data rather than via LA workbooks, and examine the options for regional or national funding, consistent with other FE funding streams.
• The designation of specialist colleges: unlike in schools, there is no split between maintained and independent specialist provision in FE. Specialist colleges, referred to as special post-16 institutions (SPIs) by DfE are excluded from the scope of many policies and funding schemes – including FE capital funding – because they are not part of the statutory FE sector. Government should recognise that SPIs are fulfilling a state function and include specialist colleges in support provided to state schools and GFE colleges.
• Data collection: the Department for Education runs fewer reports and publishes less analysis of the data for FE than for school-aged children. This makes it far more difficult to analyse the 16-25 age range within the SEND system separately, to make comparisons between the different phases and to make informed recommendations for change. It is also leading policy makers to make the misplaced assumption that solutions, borne out of analysis of the data on school-aged children, can be meaningfully applied to FE. Data on measuring progress, post college destinations in comparison to starting points, achievement of learning aims, and inclusion of those working below Level 1 in national data sets is essential to understand the full picture of whether the system is working.

To build a SEND system that effectively supports all learners from 0 to 25, there must be greater acknowledgment of these post-16 differences.

Natspec would be pleased to provide more detail to the Public Accounts Committee or expand on these points if required.

November 2024