Leaders in mainstream and specialist schools have warned that the government’s plan for a new wave of SEND free schools will not solve the places crisis.
In its long-awaited SEND improvement plan announcement last week, the Department for Education included details of areas where proposals for a new special free school have been approved.
However, sector leaders have warned that these plans will only meet a fraction of the demand for additional places for children with special educational needs and disabilities.
The DfE’s announcement of the SEND and Alternative Provision Improvement Plan included a commitment of thousands more specialist school places, with 33 new special free schools approved across the country.
The department said that these free schools, in selected local authorities, will add to the 49 free schools already in the pipeline.
It said the move is part of the government’s £2.6 billion investment between 2022 and 2025 to increase special school and alternative provision capacity.
SEND: The shortage of special-school places
But Warren Carratt, chief executive of Nexus Multi Academy Trust, a trust of special schools in Yorkshire, said that, while he welcomed “the recognition in the plan that more school placements are needed”, the commitment should only be the “starting point”.
“When you combine the number of free special schools that have previously been announced with the additional schools included in the plan today, it results in an average of 0.5 special schools per local authority, many of which may not open for another five years,” he said.
“My lived experience tells me that - were this available today - it would not be enough to overcome the current challenges and needs facing local authorities or special and AP schools nationally.”
Simon Knight, headteacher of Frank Wise special school in Oxfordshire, went further, pointing out that free schools have failed to deliver the special-school places needed.
“It is time that government moves beyond policies such as free schools, that within the specialist sector have not delivered the necessary capacity efficiently, effectively or at scale,” he said.
“If free schools are seen as the answer to the specialist sector capacity crisis, then I fear that government is not sufficiently aware of the scale of the problem.”
To establish a special free school, a council needs to get DfE approval for the project and then invite trusts to bid to run it.
Ashley Eastwood, an executive headteacher with responsibility for SEND at Newham’s Learning in Harmony Multi Academy Trust, who has been involved in setting up a special free school set to open later this year, also warned the new wave of free schools won’t be enough.
He said: “Our school has one special school and we are opening a new special free school with a specialism in autism, which is what there is a need for here.
“The programme has been good and the department have been a supportive partner, but on its own a new wave of special free schools will not meet the need nationally.”
He added that Newham, in East London, was one of the areas that applied to have a new free school but was rejected.
“The government produced a list of the schools which went ahead but also published a larger list of proposals which have not been approved. Newham was among these. It won’t necessarily be that these free school bids did not meet the criteria [but] that there is only a finite amount that the government can approve,” he said.
Several local authority areas, including Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole; Cumbria; Gloucestershire; Manchester; and Swindon were among areas that submitted bids for multiple free schools that were not approved by the DfE this time.
Birmingham had two bids rejected but a third was given the go-ahead, focused on pupils with social and emotional health needs.
In total 54 bids were not approved.
The Local Government Association (LGA) which represents councils across England, said: ”The LGA supports proposals to deliver greater capacity to address existing supply issues in the SEND system.
“An additional £2.6 billion over three years for SEND capital is also welcome, as is the flexibility to spend this money on specialist units in mainstream settings, as well as new special schools.
‘Speed at which places brought on line is too slow’
“Feedback from councils however is that the speed at which new special school places can be brought online is too slow. We are keen to work with the Department to identify opportunities to speed this process up.
“The introduction of intervention powers will be crucial in impressing on all mainstream settings the need to take an inclusive approach, which will in turn reduce the use of special schools and independent, non-maintained special schools and relieve pressure on council high needs budgets, as well as improve outcomes for children and young people with SEND.”
The government’s SEND improvement plan includes a proposal to create new national standards in SEND provision and to push ahead with a plan to digitise the education, health and care plan process.
However, many of the proposals in the SEND plan, including these, will not be rolled out until 2025.
Mr Knight added: “There is little in the plan which will transform the long-term outcomes for people with learning disabilities. It reads as though government have taken their best swing but pulled their punch.
“It reads more like a handover document, a set of instructional ambitions to be taken forward by another administration: an admission of failure that will be the responsibility of a new administration to resolve.
“I just hope that whoever inherits this builds on what has come before and avoids the temptation to once again review the challenges that have been known for so long.”
The Department for Education has been approached for comment.
