Written evidence submitted by The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT)

(SFC0053)

1. NAHT welcomes the opportunity to submit evidence to the Public Accounts Committee inquiry

2. NAHT is the UK’s largest professional trade union for school leaders.  We represent more than 38,000 head teachers, executive heads, CEOs, deputy and assistant heads, vice principals and school business leaders.  Our members work across: the early years, primary, special and secondary schools; independent schools; sixth form and FE colleges; outdoor education centres; alternative provision; pupil referral units; social services establishments and other educational settings.

3. In addition to the representation, advice and training that we provide for existing school leaders, we also support, develop and represent the school leaders of the future, through the middle leadership section of our association.  We use our voice at the highest levels of government to influence policy for the benefit of leaders and learners everywhere.

Summary

4. NAHT welcomes the additional transparency and information in relation to the current SEND system provided by the recent NAO report[1], as well as the context relevant sections of the Local Government Association (LGA) & County Council Network (CCN) commissioned Isos report from June 2024[2] – ‘Towards an effective and financially sustainable approach to SEND in England’.

5. When the SEND Green Paper[3] was published in 2022, NAHT stated at the time how invaluable it would be to assess feedback from all the relevant ‘players’ in the system – children and young people with SEND / their families, school leaders, LA leaders, health providers, social care and other support services – thus providing an honest and accurate picture that reflected the relative performance, success or otherwise of existing arrangements.

6. It would have been preferable for this type of feedback to have been sought prior to the Green Paper development and launch. It would have been equally important that the feedback did not generate a picture of how stakeholders might wish the system to be seen, but instead describe an honest, open and factual context of the system as it was, thereby reflecting the lived experience of pupils with SEND, their families, schools and every other significant player in the system. That is why, although unnecessarily delayed until now, the description of the current context in the two reports referenced in point 4. above are so welcome.

7. In this paper, as the timescale for written submission to this inquiry was so limited, NAHT will simply seek to add some additional perspectives to the three areas of focus – that is:

1. briefly describe the views of school leaders which add to the picture of the current performance of the SEND system,
2. layout the difficulties schools face in obtaining the specialist support pupils with SEND require, and
3. illustrate how the publicly shared concerns of school leaders about the gradual worsening of the SEND system were not heeded enough by the previous government to match the growing challenges with sufficient resource or ambition to address them.

Performance of the system

8. In its call for a reformed SEN system, the NAO report[4] highlights a number of performance concerns including:
1. no consistent improvement in outcomes for pupils with SEN,
2. a lack of confidence in the system by families and children / young people,
3. an acknowledgement of a system that often falls short of statutory and quality expectations,
4. little confidence within DfE about how much capacity should be planned, and where, to meet future needs, and,
5. a recognition that state special schools are over capacity which may lead to poor value for money.

9. None of the above concerns are new or especially recent in school leaders’ experiences. NAHT school leader members have been raising concerns about the SEND system for many years because, from their perspective at the sharp end, they could see the direction of travel in terms of both the then government’s SEND policy and the allocation of resource to each part of it, and the subsequent slow breakdown of the key cogs in the wider SEND system.

10. For example, school leaders in all phases have raised increasing concerns over recent years about the number of pupils with SEND who are now being placed in inappropriate settings because spaces in the appropriate setting are unavailable – e.g. – where a special school place is agreed, but not available, local authorities are now more frequently placing pupils in mainstream schools (but without the full budget and provision those pupils would access in a special school placement).

11. Staff in mainstream schools, like all settings, seek to provide the best possible education but without the appropriate level of resource, staffing, training or building facilities, school leaders and their staff are hamstrung and often unable to implement the full provision the pupil requires.

12. As a result, many mainstream schools have subsequently sought to create unofficial SEN Units or Resourced Provision in their mainstream settings to try to provide the best they can for their pupils, but they are not furnished the requisite funding to maximise the impact of these specialist provisions. It should be noted that this unrelenting pressure on school leaders - to make a broken SEND system work - is having a highly detrimental effect on their wellbeing and, as a consequence, on the recruitment and retention of leaders at a time when they are most needed.

13. When asked in a recent NAHT survey to identify three areas of work that had the greatest impact on their workload over two-thirds (67%) of school leaders identified meeting the needs of pupils with SEND, the top answer. This finding does not mean school leaders do not want to support pupils with SEND, it is the exact opposite. In their pursuit for the best support for pupils with SEND, school leaders feel constrained by insufficient funding, staff / resource undercapacity, and a lack of access to specialist support, and as a result feel unable to provide what they believe these children and young people need and deserve.

14. The annually updated statistics on Special educational needs in England paint a clear picture as to the increasing level and complexity of SEND that schools seek to support, and the data also illustrate how the system continues to struggle to provide the SEND support and provision children and families require.

Latest statistics[5] showed:

1. both the number of pupils with an EHC plan and the number of pupils with SEN support have increased - this continues a trend since EHC plans were introduced in 2014,
2. numbers of pupils with an EHC plan increased by over 80% since 2016,
3. the number of new EHC plans made in the calendar year has also continued to increase,
4. the number of initial requests for an EHC plan also increased during the calendar year, continuing another long-term trend.

15. Although the proportion of new EHC plans issued within the statutory 20 weeks very slightly increased this year, the overall trend still illustrates a significant decrease over the last 10 years. For example, in 2015 almost 60% of new EHC plans were issued within 20 weeks, and this figure hovered either side of the 60% mark until 2021. Then in 2022, it dropped significantly, by over 10%, to below 50%, recovering slightly above 50% in 2023 in the latest figures available.

16. It is a damning indictment on the wider SEND system that approximately half of all children and young people requiring a new EHC plan will not have that plan completed and ready to be implemented within the agreed timeframe.

17. This increasing inability of the SEND system to process new EHC plans within 20 weeks deserves attention.

18. A combination of increasing EHC applications, increasing pressures and reduced capacity in schools and on SENCos workloads, insufficient capacity in specialist staffing required to process EHC assessments (e.g. Local Authority Educational Psychologists), and insufficient capacity in other sectors, such as health and social care, to provide timely information and support for pupils, has created a vicious cycle of delay and inefficiency.

19. School leaders, together with all their staff, can see from the frontline of education, how years of underinvestment in key aspects of the wider system has created increasing pressures on children and young people with SEND and their families, and on the ability of schools, local authorities, health bodies and the wider social care system, to provide what those pupils need and deserve.

20. When the Green Paper, ‘SEND review: right support, right place, right time’[6] was launched, NAHT raised concerns that it appeared to be based upon the premise that funding levels were sufficient, and a simple redistribution or more effective reallocation of the existing budget quantum would reap the desired benefits everyone sought. No evidence for this assumption was publicly presented at the time or since.

21. It remained unclear in the Green Paper proposals, how a combination of earlier intervention, increased confidence in the system to support pupils with SEND and more efficient resource allocation across the wider system, would be achieved at the funding levels available at the time.

22. NAHT noted in its submission to the Green Paper consultation that,

‘…this ‘once in a generation’ opportunity to improve the SEND system cannot be missed and government need to instil confidence in pupils with SEND, their families, their schools, health, social care and wider support services, that sufficient funding will be provided, by publishing a full and comprehensive financial impact assessment of the Green Paper proposals. Without producing such an assessment, it is unclear how confidence can be built, nor the proposals effectively implemented.’

23. No financial impact assessment of the Green Paper proposals was published, and, in the intervening period, school leaders have consistently described a continuing erosion of available funding and an increase in pressures, leading to a steady worsening in the ability of schools and the wider system to effectively support children and young people with SEND. The October 2024 NAO[7] report appears to confirm the longstanding views of school leaders and others.

24. Inequity is also perpetuated in the current system of SEND provision, where two pupils with very similar SEND can receive very different local support. As a result of the huge variation in how local systems for allocation of high-needs top-up funding operate, two pupils with similar educational needs attending similar schools in different parts of the country can bring significant differences in per-pupil funding into their respective settings.

25. As pressures on local authority high-needs budgets has increased, many local authorities have subsequently adopted banding systems for allocation of their high-needs funds to schools. NAHT members consistently report that this banding approach has frequently resulted in allocations of high-needs top-up funding that fall significantly short of the levels required to deliver agreed provision for their pupils with SEND.

26. To illustrate that this is not a new phenomenon, NAHT’s survey findings from September 2021[8], clearly demonstrated a number of issues in relation to funding and provision, including, the detrimental effect on core school funding by inadequate SEND funding, and the pressure upon schools to use their own core budgets to provide provision that should be provided by health and / or social care budgets. School leaders reported that these SEND issues created by such financial pressure were even more acute in 2022, and worse again in 2024.

27. A school's core budget, also known as revenue funding, covers the day-to-day running costs of the school. This includes: teacher pay, support staff pay, energy bills, minor maintenance, and teaching materials. It is clear, therefore, that when a school has to dip into the revenue / core budget to offset shortfalls in SEND funding, all children and young people can be detrimentally affected.

28. Many school leaders have described how, in order to balance the overall budget, largely due to SEND pressures, they have had to reduce the overall number of teaching assistants in their schools. This reduces the capacity of the school to intervene earlier for those pupils who begin to exhibit early signs of additional needs. The knock-on effect can be that further down the line many of those pupils subsequently require more significant and costly SEND intervention – an additional draw on resources that could perhaps have been avoided if the resource and capacity was available to identify and step in from the onset of concerns (e.g. if the staffing capacity had allowed it).

29. To illustrate the overwhelming concern of school leaders about the current SEND system context in 2024, one member described the situation,

“We have reached crisis point this year and with pressures of SEND and lack of funding support from underfunded local authorities, we can’t cope anymore. This is worst it has been in my 15 years as a headteacher.”

30. Too many children and young people with SEND are being failed as a result of the shortage of specialist support, insufficient funding levels and inadequate systems required to deliver effective early intervention. A successful system should reasonably expect appropriate funding in each part of the system in order to provide the high-quality specialist support and cross-sector coordination required to deliver effective early intervention in all schools, and provide the support our children and young people with SEND need and deserve.

31. NAHT members retain fundamental concerns regarding the significant increased expectations being placed upon mainstream settings within existing proposals laid out by the previous government. As previously cited, our funding surveys show that nearly all responding school leaders said funding for pupils with SEND, and top-up funding for pupils with EHC plans, were both insufficient.

32. Nearly all responding school leaders said they continue to divert core school funding in order to offset insufficient SEND funding, and increasing numbers of them say that their ability to make up the shortfall in notional SEND funding (as well as the insufficient health and social care provision) mean they cannot meet the full provision their pupils with SEND need.

33. Mainstream settings must be sufficiently funded if early intervention and effective support is to be realised, and DfE must give strong consideration to how ongoing training is to be provided for every sector, but especially to mainstream staff and leaders.

34. There is also a need to acknowledge, recognise and address the current capital funding pressures facing schools across every region of England. Significant parts of the school estate are not fit for purpose and create unnecessary barriers for children and young people with SEND, and also for staff with disabilities.

The overall picture on the support available and outcomes achieved for those with SEN

35. Evidence suggests that the support available for children and young people with SEND is increasingly under pressure, and increasingly fails to meet the expected provision, including that which is laid out in EHC plans.

36. As an example, the numbers of parents resorting to the SEND Tribunal, the independent body that hears appeals and claims against local authorities and schools regarding special educational needs and disabilities, are significant. A SEND Tribunal can assess, reassess, issue, change, or maintain a child or young person's EHC plan after considering all relevant evidence.

37. In the first quarter of 2024, the SEND tribunal recorded 5,800 appeals, which is a 78% increase from the same quarter in 2023. This is the largest quarterly increase ever for the SEND tribunal.[9]

38. In 2022–2023, 98.3% of parents who appealed to the SEND tribunal won their case, which is the highest percentage since records began in 2011–2012.[10]

39. One of the biggest challenges facing local authorities and schools in securing the support provision children and young people with SEND require, is the lack of capacity in external specialist staff.

40. NAHT are part of the SEND in the Specialist Coalition, which is a coalition led by the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) working with the National Deaf Children’s Society, Speech and Language UK (formerly I CAN) and Voice 21.

41. In November 2022, RCSLT brought together 110 organisations (now 125 organisations) into a broad coalition of charities, royal colleges, professional bodies, professional associations, trade unions, parents and carers and others to publicly write to the ministers in charge of the SEND Review to ask them to invest in the specialist workforce for children and young people. The letter noted that while the need for specialists is increasing, insufficient numbers are being trained to meet demand. Many are failing to be retained, and many are leaving the public sector altogether. These concerns persist.

42. For example, the last government’s most recent data showed, as of February 2024, 72,661 children were waiting for Speech and Language Therapy. The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists published a report in April last year that stated there was a 25% vacancy rate in children’s services across England, with some areas as high as 36% vacancies.[11]

43. A British Psychological Society (BPS) survey published in September 2024[12], found that

‘…just over half of all educational psychologists say they feel unable to support children and young people with their current workload. The survey also found that 70 per cent of respondents feel that children and young people in their local authority didn't have fair and equal access to an educational psychologist.  These concerning findings come as over 20,000 children wait for an Education, Health, and Care (EHC) assessment in England, and over 4,000 who do have plans wait for a suitable school place. As a result of these pressures, a quarter (26 per cent) of educational psychologists surveyed by the BPS said they are thinking about moving on from the sector or changing their employment model in the next 12 months. With a further 20 per cent undecided on their future, it could leave thousands more children without the support they need and exacerbate the postcode lottery currently affecting services.’

44. In 2024, through a NAHT survey 96% of school leaders told us that in their schools, provision and support stated in Section G (health care provision) for all pupils with EHC plans is either not met at all (33%), or only partially met (62%) by the responsible commissioning health body. 85% of this same group of school leaders told us that they were either fully (17%) or partially (68%) subsiding healthcare provision from their core school budget.

45. Similarly, in the same survey, 91% of school leaders told us that in their schools, provision and support stated in Section H (social care provision) for all pupils with EHC plans is either not met at all (25%), or only partially met (66%) by the responsible local authority. 88% of this same group of school leaders told us that they were either fully (13% of the group) or partially (76% of the group) subsiding social care provision from their core school budget.

46. Many pupils with SEND achieve remarkable progress and outcomes, especially when taking into account the barriers they may face and their relative starting points / baselines on entry to formal education.

47. School staff, in partnership with parents and families, often help children and young people with SEND reach significant outcomes, in many cases making better than expected progress. However, the current school performance and wider accountability system fails to fully acknowledge this achievement, if the academic attainment does not meet what is described as ‘the expected standard’.

48. This narrow measurement of attainment does a disservice to these young people as it fails to recognise their effort, commitment and broader achievement, particularly if their SEND means their starting point was significantly lower than most of their peers.

Government action to create a sustainable SEN system and restore confidence

49. NAHT members strongly believe that committing to a far more equitable and sustainable school / SEND funding approach should not lead to a levelling down for any schools nor within any single sector – early years, primary, secondary or specialist settings. NAHT members oppose the implementation of a system that leads to cuts for any school or local authority. Inconsistency in sufficiency and distribution remains a significant and long-standing issue for SEND funding.

50. SEND legislation and the SEND Code of Practice are based upon the premise of an effective, functioning needs-led system. It would be wrong for any government to seek to adopt a system that dilutes that commitment in favour of an inadequate, resource-limited system.

51. NAHT believes that health, social care and other support services also require sufficient, protected funding to fulfil their SEND duties if the needs of pupils are to be met. The wider accountability system also requires strong levers to ensure each of the above sectors is held to account if they do not fulfil their respective duties. In the current climate, schools are frequently having to fill the health and social care funding gap for their pupils.

52. Mainstream schools, special schools and specialist and alternative provision should be able to offer equally high-quality education to meet the specific requirements of their pupils with SEND. Needs-led planning is essential, and this can only be properly delivered by utilising existing figures and forecast data and projecting forward to better calculate the ongoing investment required in the future.

53. In our recent survey, NAHT asked school leaders about the most effective actions that government could take to bring immediate workload reduction – approaching nine in ten (86%) leaders selected ‘fully fund and resource sufficient SEN provision for those with EHCPs and those requiring SEN support’, the top answer. By addressing the most fundamental issues in the SEND system, government could quite conceivably also begin to address other interrelated issues facing the wider education system.

54. Clearly, local authority high-needs deficits are creating increasing pressures and remain a significant barrier to establishing a successful and sustainable SEND system. There are 55 local authorities in the Delivering Better Value Programme and 38 local authorities in the Safety Valve Programme, both implemented under the previous government. Which means that over 60% of all local authorities in England are in one type of DfE Dedicated Schools Grant deficit intervention programme.

55. Questions must be asked, therefore, about the underinvestment in the wider SEND system by the previous government that results in almost two thirds of all local authorities in England finding themselves unable to provide SEND support and provision without resorting to overspends.

56. Safety Valve local authorities require a contractual agreement between them and the DfE designed to address overspending on high needs budgets. But many school leaders, and other stakeholders, are concerned that the DfE provide this financial assistance to address local authorities facing deficits on condition that spending on SEND provision must be limited in some way. Whilst the Safety Valve programme aims to reduce costs, school leaders believe the effect may actually be a reduction in provision for children and young people with SEND, which is unacceptable.

57. The additional £1 billion provided by the current government for SEND in the autumn budget 2024 is, of course, very welcome, but it has to be seen as just the first step in a longer-term and significant investment required in a SEND system that is increasingly dysfunctional.

58. A further concern expressed by NAHT members, and noted in the NAO report[13], is the risk that much of this additional £1 billion risks simply be consumed by the existing black hole in the high-needs budgets of England’s local authorities. As the Isos report, commissioned by LGA and CCN, notes[14]:

‘At present a Statutory Override is keeping over £3.2bn of money that has already been spent off councils’ balance sheets – a figure that is constantly rising.’

59. In October 2024, the CCN stated[15] that twenty-six of England's largest councils could have to declare bankruptcy by 2027 if the statutory override ends and the multi-billion SEND deficits they are grappling with are placed onto their budget books. The new government need to make decisions urgently in order to secure confidence that this outcome can be avoided over the short term, and then bring forward a considered strategy to address the deficits and secure a long-term solution.

60. This is why NAHT believe the government must ultimately cancel local authority high-needs deficits to stop the current level of debt simply consuming funding which is set aside for children and young people with SEND.

61. There also remains a fundamental issue in the core per pupil funding for mainstream and special school placements. NAHT members believe that the core per pupil / placement funding in mainstream and special schools should, as a minimum, reflect inflation increases annually. For example, the £10,000 per pupil special school placement has not changed for over a decade, whilst associated costs have obviously increased significantly. If the £10,000 had kept track of CPI over the same period, each pupil in a special school would generate over £13,000 today.

62. The higher profile role for alternative provision (AP) described in the Green Paper, and the growing recognition that AP, Special Schools and specialist SEND provision are integral parts of a whole education continuum, was welcome. This was especially so, given the often-peripheral view these education sub-sectors had received from certain policy makers in the past.

63. The vision of AP’s role in the new system described by the previous government – earlier intervention, outreach work, increased capacity and retained AP places over more than a single year or two (as was the case) – had been welcomed, especially by leaders in AP.

64. However, if this vision of a more integrate role for mainstream schools, special schools and AP is to be realised, it needs to be backed by significant investment and capacity-building and not at the expense of other parts of the wider schools and SEND system. Only then would there be the best opportunity for a positive impact upon outcomes for children and young people. If the proposed system functions as intended, earlier intervention, support to help pupils, including those at risk of exclusion, remain in the right setting (with probably reduced numbers of tribunal claims) could ensure pupils have the best chance of achieving their potential.

65. It is still impossible for the government to be confident that a simple redistribution of the existing quantum of funding in the current system will be sufficient to ensure all parts of the system have the financial stability required to deliver the vision for more / earlier intervention, effective support and better outcomes.

66. Given that the numbers of pupils with SEND are still increasing, it was disingenuous of the previous government to suggest the inadequate funding in the dysfunctional SEND system would be somehow sufficient if it was just redistributed.

67. NAHT would simply suggest that each sector in the wider SEND system – including education, local authorities, health and social care – require sufficient funding and capacity building to fulfil their respective duties to pupils with SEND. NAHT can find no evidence that any of the named sectors are funded sufficiently and nor can we find evidence that it is simply the inefficient use of existing funding that is the major issue. Arguably, there is some evidence that the only misdirection of funding taking place is as a result of school budgets being used to plug gaps in areas of responsibility outside education, as noted in our funding surveys.

November 2024