Special schools are being left in the dark over how much funding they will receive to cover the National Insurance rise and other increasing costs this spring, after being forced to negotiate with local authorities over allocations, leaders have warned.
The chancellor confirmed £1.6 billion of additional funding for schools and high needs for the 2022-23 financial year at last year’s spending review, part of which is distributed via the Schools Supplementary Grant (SSG).
The government said the SSG - which is worth £1.2 billion in 22-23 - is designed to provide support for schools with extra costs, such as the National Insurance rise.
Special school leaders have expressed concern that the allocation of the funding will become a “postcode lottery”, with some local authorities not planning to pass the cash on directly.
The funding for special, alternative provision (AP) and hospital schools is distributed by local authorities based on their “high-needs” allocation, which gives them the power over exactly how the money is allocated. This is not like the funding for mainstream schools, which receive the money directly.
Specials schools worried about a lack of funding
Nationally, the supplementary funding for high needs is an increase of 4 per cent to the allocations announced in July 2021, so the government says local authorities should be able to afford some increase to special school top-up funding.
In a recent survey of 120 special, AP and hospital schools run by the National Network of Special Schools (NNoSS), almost all respondents (96 per cent) said they were not confident they would receive adequate funding, with almost two-thirds (65 per cent), saying they had not yet had communication from their local authority over SSG funding.
More than three-quarters were unsure of the methodology that their authority would use to allocate the money.
In a briefing on the SSG, the NNoSS said that, although there were examples of local authorities passing the funding on, there was “a lack of consistency” across the country, and that this could be particularly worrying “at a time when there are other increasing pressures on budgets”, such as rising energy costs.
Pauline Aitchison, a network lead at the NNoSS, said she had previously written to the education secretary, Nadhim Zahawi, calling for clearer guidance on the allocations to be given to local authorities. She added that the difference between a full allocation being passed on or not could be tens of thousands of pounds.
“While you can’t generalise, if special schools don’t get this money, you’d assume they’d have to pay extra costs out of their budgets. If they’ve not got big reserves, it could push them into a deficit or could they start having to use what reserves they have,” said Ms Aitchison.
“Some could see this as fine as a temporary measure, but what happens going forwards?”
Warren Carratt, CEO at Nexus Multi-Academy Trust - a trust of special schools across Yorkshire - said the “ideal” solution would be if the government would direct local authorities to pass the money on to schools directly.
He added: “The risk is that they could disadvantage schools if they don’t - it increases the notion of a postcode lottery.
“If special and AP schools don’t get the extra money, they could be put under extra financial stress, but, ultimately, the money going to local authorities passes a dilemma on to local government.”
A Department for Education spokesperson said the approach of paying the SSG directly to mainstream schools, whilst paying it to local authorities for special, AP and others, “replicates” the approach taken through the National Funding Formula (NFF).
They added: “From 2023-24, the supplementary grant will be rolled into the NFF.”
