New special schools aren’t being built quick enough to cope with the rising demand for places – and this is a problem that urgently needs to be addressed in the government’s SEND review, says Simon Knight
As someone who has been working in the specialist sector for over 20 years, I have long been aware of the pressure on special school capacity.
Indeed, it is a regular occurrence for our school to be full for 18 months in advance - even though over the past six years our capacity has increased by approximately 20 per cent without any additional allocation of space.
This is not a situation unique to our setting either, as more and more children are being required to be educated within the same specialist sector classrooms - risking worsening both the quality of education and the sensory experience of being in school.
In the section on schools and pupils, there is data that shows that the state-funded special school headcount has increased by 28,813 (27 per cent) since 2015-16. At the same, the number of schools has only increased by 32.
This disconnect between the growth in pupil numbers and the growth in the number of settings raises a number of questions about the place planning process, how these children are being accommodated within the system and whether their educational requirements are being met effectively.
The long-awaited SEND review could finally be a chance to tackle these questions - but there is a lot the DfE will need to do to ensure that we have a suitable school place for every child who requires an education outside of mainstream provision.
What the SEND review must do
Firstly, we need to have a better collective understanding of existing capacity.
We need to know how many places there are in the specialist sector, where they are and who they are most suitable for.
While ”Special educational needs in England” is a rich source of data, it is unclear from this what is available, how many spaces there are across the system.
Without that data being analysed and published on a regular basis, it is difficult to understand the extent to which the ability of the system to provide appropriate places is worsening or improving.
Secondly, we need to better understand how well additional planned capacity is matched to local need, and able to meet that need in a timely manner.
Without the data mentioned above, disaggregated by local area and by the type of provision, it is hard to know if the new schools being planned will mitigate the existing pressures on schools effectively.
What we do know is that the pace of delivery of many of these schools is highly variable.
Currently, of the approximately 60 special free schools in the pre-opening stage, almost 20 of them have been in pre-opening for more than four years. It is also notable that the total additional capacity that they offer is just over 6,000 places.
To accommodate the growth we have seen in the past six years, we need to be increasing capacity by somewhere near 50 schools’ worth a year - not the five a year on average being reported.
However, new schools are not the only way of increasing capacity within the system. This can also be achieved by expanding existing special schools (by constructing new buildings on site and increasing teacher headcount).
Once again, though, we do not have a clear understanding of how many of the existing special schools could be expanded and how many places this would result in.
Thirdly, we need to better understand the impact of resource bases that are usually found on mainstream school sites and can offer more specialist and targeted support for pupils
At present, the efficacy of such settings is not well researched, and their impact is not understood clearly enough.
If they are the best way to meet the educational requirements of some children with SEND then they could be another way to help lessen the pressure on special schools and meet the needs of pupils in mainstream provision.
However, if they are only a policy of convenience providing a quick fix to a systemic problem, that is something else entirely.
More detailed research is needed to understand this so we understand how to use this resource more - or redirect funding to better areas.
The time to act is now
It is important to acknowledge that this is a complex problem and one policy paper will not, in and of itself, change things overnight.
However, the consequences of the breakdown in the strategic planning processes at a national level are being felt keenly by children and their families, who often find it difficult to access the provision that their children require in a timely manner.
Now, more than ever, we need the SEND review to provide tangible solutions to problems that families experience within the SEND system and ensure that there is an adequate number of schools able to meet this need.
This is an issue that has been overlooked for too long and yet, as the data makes clear, must be addressed soon.
Simon Knight is special-school leader and a national SEND leader at Whole School SEND
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