At the start of the year we reported on the plight of so-called “magnet” schools.

These are mainstream schools that attract a higher proportion of special educational needs and disability students because they have a strong reputation for providing excellent opportunities for children with SEND, including those with education, health and care plans (EHCPs).

It’s a reputation that the schools cherish because it underlines their welcoming ethos and is a testament to their positive reputation among parents: one head likened it to having a five-star review on Tripadvisor.

However, taking on large numbers of children with SEND and EHCPs can have unintended consequences: for example, it generally means lower assessment outcomes that can then lead to lower Ofsted inspection outcomes.

Another impact is on staffing costs, as there is an increased need to fund support staff to work with these pupils to ensure that the provision they require can be provided.

Extra funding for schools working with these pupils goes some way towards covering this, but many have warned that this is not a sustainable model and money has often had to be drawn from elsewhere in the school budget to make things work.

SEND ‘magnet’ schools: extra costs for support staff

These concerns have rocketed this week after pay rises ranging from 4 to 10.5 per cent for school support staff were announced - putting huge pressure on budgets. The very staff the rises are meant to reward could end up facing redundancy.

“As a SEND magnet school [with] 8 per cent EHCP [pupils], we have a significant number of support staff,” wrote Simon Smith, headteacher of East Whitby Academy, in North Yorkshire, on Twitter.

“We have managed our budget well but this would be £40,000 and we would have to make redundancies.”

Meanwhile, Vic Goddard, co-principal of Passmores Academy in Harlow, Essex, says it is akin to being “punished” for being an inclusive school and that he now faces major budgetary shortfalls.

“With 60-plus students with an EHCP, I employ a lot of support staff and because our approach is long-established, I have many such staff that have been with us for many years and are therefore paid more,” he tells Tes.

“This combined with notional funding of EHCPs means that we are £170,000 worse off in September for support staff salaries, and £100,000 on teaching staff salaries.”

Cuts in other areas must follow

It’s a concern that Pepe Di’Iasio, headteacher of Wales High School, in Rotherham, which works with children with SEND and EHCPs from across four local authorities, shares.

“The recent announcement on support staff pay rises will hit magnet schools and special schools hardest as they employ a larger proportion of teaching assistants to support students with EHCPs,” he notes.

“It really does feel like we are stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea, as we look where the additional funds to pay for all these increased pressures are going to come from.”

He adds that he is already having to think about cutting down on future recruitment in order to avoid overspending: “We have a number of vacancies and are due to appoint in September - I’m guessing we might look to rationalise these positions,” he says.

For Goddard, it will also mean reducing spending earmarked for other areas.

“It will definitely mean that the planned investment in IT will have to go immediately,” he says, adding that this will have a negative impact on the school community.

“This was aimed at ensuring our community has the same access at home and in school to devices as more affluent areas. Levelling up, anyone?”

Smith is facing similar cutbacks: “We’ve got things I can pull back on: new furniture, building works - but that means planned improvements to school won’t happen, [but] that will potentially mitigate [the pay rises] this year, as well as a small surplus,” he says.

The threat of redundancies

However, both he and Goddard are worried about finding enough in their budgets to avoid redundancies.

“Next year it may lead to redundancies,” warns Smith, while Goddard adds: “I am trying to not think it’ll need to be redundancies but I suspect it will.”

This is not a situation either wants to see, of course - noting that it will reduce the capacity in the school and impact on both staff and students. “This will impact on provision for all pupils and workload and wellbeing of staff,” says Smith.

For children with SEND in mainstream settings, the loss of support staff would be bad enough - but for special schools, the impact could be even more devastating, as Pauline Aitchison, chair of the National Network of Special Schools for School Business Professionals, explains.

“Special schools, in particular, have disproportionately high numbers of support staff and many special schools already missed out on the schools supplementary grant earlier in the year,” she says. 

“Many schools will have to consider reducing staff to cover the increased costs, on top of other rising costs”.

Special school fears come to a head

Yet for special-school leaders, the idea of reducing headcounts seems even more unthinkable than for those in magnet schools, as Simon Knight, headteacher at Frank Wise School, in Banbury, Oxfordshire, explains to Tes.

“We also have less manoeuvrability with regards to staffing as reductions can impact on both safety and the ability of schools to meet the requirements set out in the pupils’ education, health and care plans (EHCPs),” he says.

“The government’s understanding of special-school finances is utterly disconnected from our reality and it is increasingly challenging to set a balanced budget and serve our communities. Additional funding into schools is desperately needed, but any solution appears long in the making.”

Gary Smith, executive headteacher of Market Field School, a day special school in Essex for pupils aged 5-16 who experience moderate learning difficulties, paints a similar picture.

“I am flabbergasted - yet not surprised - that there is no mention of how [this pay increase] will be funded […] we cannot exist without our levels of staffing and all special schools and many mainstream will go into crisis,” he tells Tes.

The government would no doubt point to the fact that alongside wider increases in school budgets - £4 billion extra for the next financial year as part of a total of £7 billion over the three years - high-needs funding for special schools is also increasing by £1.65 billion by 2023-24.

However, given the scale of the concerns raised by leaders in both mainstream and special schools, it seems there is a disconnect between the new money coming in and how far it will have to go.

A well deserved pay rise

Despite their stark financial predicament, school leaders recognise how deserving their staff are of the pay rises.

“Special schools, in particular, would not be the thriving institutions that they are without the fantastic support staff who have long been underpaid yet highly valued,” says Smith.

“This pay rise is completely merited and long overdue.” 

Di’Iasio, meanwhile, says support staff are the “heartbeat of many schools” and “rightly deserve the recognition and improved reward for the massive difference they make for young people each and every day”.

However, these pay rises, coupled with rises for teachers and ballooning energy costs, mean that what should have been positive news for the sector has instead simply created many more headaches.

Terrible timing

Add to this the fact that it has been announced just as schools were finishing for summer - leaving heads scrambling to fix their budgets again - and it’s easy to see why frustrations are so high.

Indeed, for Annamarie Hassall, CEO of the National Association for Special Educational Needs (Nasen), this has been one of the biggest frustrations of the situation - especially when it could have easily been avoided.

“What doesn’t make sense is to [announce pay rises] without having communication with a number of the communities of interest in the sector,” she says.

She notes, for example, that groups such as the National SEND Reference Group, which brings together groups from across the special-school sector and that Nasen convenes, heard nothing about these planned rises - despite representatives from the Department for Education being in attendance.

“There are a number of established forums where government and others have an opportunity to talk through impact of ideas and policies…I think that’s the disappointing aspect, that it doesn’t appear that some of the established networks have been utilised in a good way,” says Hassall.

Of course, all schools will feel the impact of having to find this money - not just special schools or magnet schools.

A perverse situation

Yet it does seem perverse that schools that have strived to provide as much support as possible for children with SEND and employ the necessary staff to facilitate this face being hit the hardest - especially due to a situation that is ostensibly trying to reward those staff.

As such, it is perhaps no surprise that Smith warns that the impact will not only be felt in the short term around cutbacks in other areas and potential redundancies, but also in how schools position themselves to support children with SEND and EHCPs.

“This impacts more on schools that are inclusive and ultimately will drive schools away from being inclusive,” he says.

This hardly seems in keeping with the government’s public desire to improve inclusivity, as outlined earlier this year in the SEND Green Paper - especially as the paper itself acknowledgeds that magnet schools can face a tougher reality than their peers.

“There is a perception that those that do welcome pupils with SEND become ‘magnet schools’ and see increasing numbers attending, which becomes unsustainable over time,” the paper says.

Tes contacted the Department for Education for its response to the concerns raised in this article - but a spokesperson reiterated a previous line that increases in budgets should help to alleviate these concerns.

“Funding for these pay awards will come from the generous school funding settlement at last year’s Spending Review. The settlement is heavily frontloaded with £4 billion extra going into schools this year and a total increase of £7 billion over the three years up to 2024-25,” they said.

It seems doubtful this will appease leaders across the country frantically recalculating their budgets, alongside heads of finance and school business managers, for the year head.

For Smith it is a situation that he says the government needs to face up to - and one he is willing to illuminate: “I am more than happy to explain to ministers if they cannot understand.”