Early years providers are being “penalised” for stepping in to take on Reception-age pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) amid a drastic shortage of special or appropriate primary school places, sector leaders have warned.
Early Years Foundation Stage leaders have said there is an “urgent need” for the Department for Education to create a permanently funded route for maintained nursery schools (MNS) to offer specialist Reception places as demand escalates.
While many say they are happy to provide the places, MNS have warned that the current funding system “penalises” settings for stepping in when pupils are left without a Reception place, as they face a “lottery” over whether the place is funded by the local authority.
And MNS are also calling for comparative funding as they point out that even when they are awarded extra cash, they do not receive the same amount of per-pupil funding as given to a primary school or special school.
Early Education, a charity and professional membership organisation for early years practitioners and providers, has called on the DfE to “urgently” “build in flexibility” so MNS can “play a part”.
The organisation has also raised the issue in its submission to the Commons Education Select Committee’s inquiry into the early years, which is ongoing.
MNS have warned that where “no other suitable provision can be found...the alternative is for a child to have a reduced timetable at a primary school or no place at all”.
SEND: Nursery schools offering Reception places
In its submission earlier this year, Early Education said: “Where MNS provide places to statutory school-age Reception-age children, there is no consistent means for them to access funding, meaning it is a lottery whether the local authority funds the places.”
And it stated that MNS should be enabled to offer Reception provision for pupils with SEND, including for those of statutory school age, and funded at the same rate as special schools.
“There is an urgent need for DfE to create a route to allow MNS to offer and be funded for specialist Reception places where this is deemed to be in the best interests of the child,” the organisation said.
Beatrice Merrick, chief executive of Early Education, said that while MNS can be commissioned on a temporary basis to offer specialist provision for Reception-age children, regulations do not allow for the setting to be offered the same level of funding as a special school would receive to deliver the same places.
Ms Merrick said one possible solution would be to “change the definition of a maintained nursery school to allow the admission of children at any point in the Early Years Foundation Stage, including Reception, and to adjust funding mechanisms to reflect this”.
“Alternatively, better arrangements need to be created to allow for the long-term commissioning of MNS to deliver inclusive Reception provision for special and primary schools which allows for the nursery school to be funded at the same level as similar provision in those schools,” she added.
“While nursery schools are often ideally suited to meeting these children’s needs...the current system penalises them for doing so”
Earlier this year Tes revealed that only 3 per cent of early years settings said they would be able to continue providing their current level of services or places.
Ms Merrick told Tes that members are “increasingly telling us of cases where they are being asked to keep on Reception-age children with SEND for whom no place can be found in a local primary or special school”.
“While MNS are often ideally suited to meeting these children’s needs, and have a staunch commitment to doing what is right for the child, the current system penalises MNS for doing so,” she said,
Ms Merrick added that while MNS can offer Reception provision on a temporary basis, the DfE had “refused requests for successful arrangements of this nature to be made permanent” and a school or local authority has to commission the MNS to deliver the provision, which requires approval from the Education and Skills Funding Agency.
One MNS headteacher, who wished to remain anonymous, said they would like to see the DfE funding MNS properly, adding that “too often MNS are working on good will rather than being funded appropriately”.
They added that when MNS do provide Reception places, it puts further pressure on their funding as they have to shift the money from somewhere else.
They said that providing the provision for children in need of a place is “part of our remit”.
But they added: “We often have children with the most complex needs that we’re providing a Reception place for and if they have [an education, health and care plan] they get the funding but sometimes it isn’t all the money that’s needed to meet their needs and then it comes out of other school budgets.”
Another headteacher of a MNS, who also wished to remain anonymous, said that they had one or two pupils with SEND a year who had needed Reception-age provision over the past decade, but that number had started to go up.
They said that having the pupils return to the nursery “has been particularly challenging as we do not get the same level of funding as primary or specialist provision, and once children turn 5 we have to commission speech and language therapy”.
While the nursery school had previously been funded by the local authority to have a Reception class for pupils with SEND, requests from the local authority to the DfE for this to be made permanent have been turned down.
The headteacher told Tes: “It would be really good if the DfE could recognise the climate and the current cohorts of children we’ve got and allow MNS to actually have Reception classes for children with SEND, and recognise that there is that pressure point and MNS have the expertise to offer this service.”
They added that it is often useful for pupils to stay for some extra time and do some more assessment, and that some pupils make enough progress to move to a mainstream provision as a result.
“I’ve had quite a lot of children, particularly this last year, that have had to stay with us. We still have a child who should be in Reception and they are still without a school place for Year 1 in September,” the head said.
Fears over nursery funding for SEND
They also highlighted other issues with SEND funding for nursery-aged children, explaining that some local authorities top up funding for children with SEND in maintained nursery schools, but it’s “hugely inconsistent across the country”.
For one nursery-aged child with very complex needs who requires a significant amount of support from a teaching assistant and attends the nursery school for 30 hours a week, the setting is only getting £9,000 per year, compared with the £28,000 cost of a TA.
“There’s a massive deficit and we can’t balance books, and then you’re worried you’re going to be at risk of closure,” said the head, who added that their school has a good “reputation” and “every professional recommends us”.
Primary schools that are inclusive are coming under huge pressure due to increased demand for places for pupils with SEND, the head said.
“I think we’re about to hit a real crisis point in the system. We’ve seen this huge increase in need, and these children are going to be going into primary school and the primary schools will then start seeing this impact,” they added.
Rob Williams, senior policy adviser at the NAHT school leaders’ union, said: “We’re hearing of increasing numbers of special schools which are over-subscribed and it is clear that there is a dire shortage of places in many regions.”
He said that while the government had made recent capital funding announcements, it had “failed to invest enough in boosting capacity in special schools, in supporting children with SEND in mainstream schools and in delivering early support through health and social care services for the increasing numbers of young children with complex needs”.
“While there are some positive aspirations in the government’s SEND improvement plan, including increasing special school places, it lacks detail, urgency and ambition. It remains unclear whether enough money will be provided to transform not just SEND education but also the input of health and social care so that support for pupils is dictated by their needs alone,” he added.
A government spokesperson said: “We want all children and young people, and particularly those with special educational needs or disabilities, to receive the support they need to succeed in their education.
“Our recently published special educational needs and disabilities improvement plan sets out how we will do this, through earlier intervention, better workforce training and national standards setting out the support that should be provided across early years, mainstream and special education.”
