Gillian Keegan has described special educational needs provision as being in a “lose-lose-lose situation” because the Treasury, local councils and service users are all unhappy despite the government “spending a fortune”.
The education secretary made the comments during a “fireside chat” at the annual Schools North East Summit in Newcastle today.
She was asked about SEND support services and funding by the Schools North East chair Colin Lofthouse.
Mr Lofthouse told Ms Keegan that school leaders felt there was a barrier to being able to access support services “that would help us to do our core job, which is to educate children”.
In response, she said: “SEND is very interesting because we are spending a fortune so the Treasury are not happy, the local authorities are not happy but then nobody is happy with the service so it is like a lose-lose-lose situation.”
Ms Keegan highlighted the importance of early diagnosis in SEND and said the government was looking at different pathways to do this.
She said: “If you were looking at the two biggest things that you could change to make a difference it would be to know as early as possible and to provide the speech and language support as quickly as possible.”
Ms Keegan also said the government’s SEND reform plans included training another 600 education psychologists and 7,000 more Sendcos.
Working for more funding from the Treasury
During the event, Ms Keegan also spoke about working to get more funding for schools from the Treasury.
She told the summit that when she started the job in October last year, she had received a letter from unions saying that an extra £2 billion was needed because of rising inflation and meeting the cost of the most recent pay rise.
Ms Keegan says: “That was the ask for the Autumn Statement, if you think back to the Autumn Statement - a lot of people prefer not to - but it was just after the mini-budget, so it was not the best of times to be going to the Treasury and saying, ‘Can I have another couple of billion quid?’”
She described securing this funding as an enormous challenge and added: “I got £2 billion so I was really pleased - I had got the union demand and I had met it. The next day, strike action was called - less pleased because I lost a lot of credibility with the Treasury.”
Ms Keegan also told the conference that speaking with the family of headteacher Ruth Perry was one of the most harrowing things she had done in the job.
Ms Perry’s family have said she took her own life following an Ofsted inspection that led to her school being downgraded from “outstanding” to “inadequate”.
Ms Keegan said that she has made changes as a result of discussions with Ms Perry’s family - including schools “having the right to get Ofsted back very quickly to reinspect”.
This refers to a change announced by Ofsted earlier this year in which inspectors will now return more quickly to schools graded “inadequate” overall only owing to ineffective safeguarding, but where all other judgements were rated as “good” or better.
The watchdog has said it will return within three months of an inspection report being published and parents will be informed of this intention in the report.
