A council battling to bring down its spending on special educational needs and disabilities provision has drawn up plans that set an expectation for mainstream secondary schools to educate pupils who are up to seven years behind age-related expectations of development.

Documents seen by Tes setting out Kent County Council’s plan for “a continuum” for pupils with SEND have led to concerns that mainstream schools will not be able to meet the needs of some of the vulnerable children they would be expected to take.

The local authority is also consulting on a plan to reclassify some of its special schools as part of a major overhaul of provision in the county.

Concerns have been raised that the reforms are being primarily driven by a need to bring down spending because the council is signed up to a Safety Valve deal with the government to remove a high needs deficit of more than £140 million.

SEND plan and staff shortages

The draft document for the SEND continuum seen by Tes suggests that local mainstream secondary schools will be expected to be able to meet the needs of pupils who are working six to seven years below their chronological age in terms of cognition and learning, while mainstream primary schools will cater for pupils who are four to five years below.

It also says that mainstream primaries and secondaries would take on pupils who have processing and memory difficulties, global development delay and who need an adapted curriculum.

But mainstream school leaders have warned the plan could put increased cost pressures on the system and make it more difficult to recruit staff.

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Tes understands that the draft Kent SEND Continuum of Need document was presented to a meeting of the county’s special-school heads earlier this month.

The plans set out how special schools will cater for pupils with profound, multiple learning difficulties, severe learning difficulties, an autism spectrum condition or emotional and mental health needs.

The document, which describes the profile of pupils who special schools would serve, says it would include those who require regular use of non-verbal cues and have some understanding of how books work - for instance, knowing to turn pages or hold it the right way up.

EHCP pupils reduction in special schools

A council plan drawn up after a negative Ofsted and Care Quality Commission SEND area inspection set a target for 80 per cent of pupils with education, health and care plans (EHCPs) to be educated in mainstream schools by the end of last year.

The council has said that its high-needs funding spend on pupils who are placed in private special schools has increased by nearly 130 per cent in five years, and the authority is “working to reduce that”.

A council spokesperson added: ”Our approach to improving the financial position is to improve the SEND system as a whole and the evidence is suggesting this is working.”

However, experts have warned that the latest plan to increase expectations on mainstream schools in Kent through a continuum to provide for a greater number of pupils with SEND will not work without more funding.

Kent is one of 38 councils that have entered into a Safety Valve deal with the government after running up large deficits on their high-needs budgets, which fund school places and top-up funding for pupils with SEND.

The council’s Safety Valve plan with the government includes an agreement that the council will “implement models of reintegration of children from special/independent schools to mainstream where needs have been met”.

Under these agreements, the Department for Education provides funding to clear or bring down the deficit and councils agree on a plan to bring their spending back into balance.

The DfE said that the deals are only agreed if its “expert SEND advisers agree with authorities that their proposals will give children and young people a better service”.

However, these deals have sparked concerns and controversy after documents show they are leading to targeted reductions in the number of children receiving or even being considered for EHCPs in some areas with deals in place.

Demands on schools

A school leader from Kent, who has asked to remain anonymous, raised concerns about the expectations being placed on local mainstream schools in the continuum document, which they warned would place additional pressure and costs on the sector.

“Mainstream schools are going to be required to deliver all of the interventions needed to meet the needs of these pupils, which will require enormous amounts of retraining, a huge amount of upskilling and a lot of investment.

“The costs for mainstream schools associated with all of this haven’t been quantified. The document also appears to be suggesting that mainstream schools can deliver this - not resourced provision within mainstream schools. There is a column in the plan for resourced provision but in the draft document this is blank,” they said.

“This plan appears to be designed to ensure more pupils with special needs are taught in mainstream schools as part of the Safety Valve plan to save money - but to achieve all of this, mainstream funding would need to be uplifted.

“Without more funding, mainstream schools will have to make cuts in what they currently do to meet these additional demands,” they added.

The school leader also warned that these “fundamental changes” will make recruitment and retention of support staff in mainstream settings more difficult, and also questioned whether the changes would involve changing staff contracts.

They added: “Given the difficulties in recruiting and retaining support staff that mainstream schools already face - that is only going to get worse if the role now comes with an expectation of being able to meet the pupils’ needs described in the document.”

Margaret Mulholland, the SEND and inclusion specialist for the Association of School and College Leaders, said that schools support pupils with more complex needs “as best they can”.

However, she added, if the expectation is that schools should be “much more inclusive and do more to meet the needs of pupils” without more funding or expert resources, “then the story of inclusion is going to be one of failure”.

“We understand that many local authorities are in a very difficult financial position, but the solution cannot be to keep placing more demands on schools without giving them the tools they need to cope with them,” she said.

“The government needs to get a handle on this crisis by ensuring more SEND funding reaches the schools and learners who need it most.”

Opposition to SEND plan

The council is also proposing to move to a new system of designations for the county’s 24 special schools, which could affect the classification of around a third.

A Kent County Council report outlining planned changes to SEND provision said that the introduction of the Kent SEND continuum and the special school review “will create a solid foundation for SEND support in Kent”.

The new designation of schools includes a plan for five schools to take on the classification of “neurodiversity and learning needs”, which has sparked concerns from local special-school leaders.

At a meeting of the council’s children, young people and education cabinet committee discussing SEND provision last week, Kent county councillor Trudy Dean said she had been told that the plan to redesignate some special schools is opposed by special-school heads across the county.

One special-school leader who spoke to Tes and who asked to remain anonymous said: “Kent County Council could not tell me who will be responsible for defining whether or not a student is neurodiverse. There is no agreement yet whether or not this would be a medical diagnosis.”

They also said they are concerned that new guidance or admissions criteria would mean “current students on roll who don’t meet the new criteria may need move to other schools if the designated school is no longer suitable”.

And they warned that the funding implications resulting from the changes are not yet clear.

The committee meeting last week was presented with plans to review special schools and proposals for moving to a new “locality model for special educational needs inclusion”, which would see schools working in clusters.

At last week’s meeting, Councillor Dean questioned to what extent the councils’ plans were being “driven or dictated to” by the council’s Safety Valve agreement with the government, and “how much of it is being done to achieve better standards”.

In response, Rory Love, the council’s cabinet member for children, young people and education, told the meeting that the council’s Safety Valve deal “is about the DfE assisting this council in paying off over £140 million” high-needs debt.

He added: “We need to continue to bring our own spending back in line with the level for which we are funding. That is also part of our commitment under the Safety Valve - something that had we done in past years, we wouldn’t have had to go to the DfE and ask for the debt to be written off and by doing that, sparing that debt eventually falling onto the council taxpayer.”

He said the proposals that the council has put forward are being carried out “not only to fulfil our part of the Safety Valve agreement to make sure we do indeed stop overspending, but also to ensure better outcomes for children and young people - that’s the key thing that drives all of us in this administration”.

A spokesperson for Kent County Council (KCC) said: “Headteachers of special schools and mainstream schools as well as multi-academy trust chief executives have been engaged in this review over the last year, and they will continue to have an important role in helping to shape its outcome, which is not yet finished.”

The council said that in addition to funding for EHCPs, roughly £13.5 million in high-needs funding is distributed annually to mainstream schools to provide extra support for pupils who do not have an EHCP. The council said it also spent £8 million on support services.

The spokesperson added: “KCC is working collaboratively with leaders to find ways to distribute the funding in a more equitable, efficient and impactful way to benefit both pupils and schools.

“Financial sustainability is a key concern. KCC is encouraged to see& evidence is now emerging of the improvements that are being made to the SEND system and we continue to review the way we work to ensure children are able to learn in safe and appropriate environments, suitable for their needs.”

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