Special schools are fighting “tooth and nail” to keep hydrotherapy pools open despite soaring costs leaving them in “impossible” situations, leaders have told Tes.
The pools are used by many pupils for therapeutic reasons, including physiotherapy, but rising energy bills and the increasing price of chemicals needed to treat the water are putting huge financial strain on budgets.
Special school headteachers have said that the cost of running the pools makes up a “huge proportion” of their soaring heating costs but, despite difficulty balancing budgets, they cannot close them, because of a duty to deliver for pupils with a legal entitlement to access them.
Some pupils have education, health and care plans (EHCPs) that entitle them to hydrotherapy, and leaders say they have endeavoured to do everything possible to keep them open despite the financial strain.
Legal experts have told Tes that special school leaders in difficulty should approach local authorities to explain the situation, though leaders themselves have said this issue is one of many financial problems, and that long-term funding issues are the root cause.
School leaders have told of soaring energy bills for months now - with rises of more than 200 per cent no longer uncommon.
The government announced a “support” scheme that will help schools last week, but details on how this will work are still to come, and the aid is only guaranteed for six months.
Schools fighting ‘tooth and nail’ to keep pools running
Matthew Smith, a business manager at Sheringham Woodfields School, a foundation special school in Norfolk, said the school was fighting “tooth and nail” to keep its pool open despite energy bills and the price of chemicals increasing in recent months, with further rises expected.
He said that if the pool were closed this would not only have implications for pupils, but also for the wider Norfolk community, many of whom use the pool outside of school hours.
“In Norfolk, alternative options that children and families have are very limited. We are fighting tooth and nail to keep our pool open, as well as to keep it open in the holidays.
“But we are now having to weigh up how much we do open in the holidays and how do we maximise the days we stay open”, he said.
He said he would read through the finer points of the energy support being offered to schools when available, but added that the problem came back to a “much bigger topic”, which was the funding of special schools in recent years, and specifically the “place funding” they are awarded.
Special schools are allocated £10,000 per place, but this has not increased in several years, despite inflation.
Warren Carratt, the chief executive at Nexus Multi Academy Trust, which operates five hydrotherapy pools, said it would need to look at making savings elsewhere, despite overall energy costs increasing by over 100 per cent compared to last year.
“A huge proportion of that increase will be the costs for keeping the pool open and constantly heated, as you can’t just turn them off,” he said.
“But we will need to look at savings elsewhere as many children have a legal entitlement to access as per their EHCP. So we’re caught between the devil and deep blue pool, if I can amend a phrase”, he added.
Nexus runs special schools in the East Midlands and Yorkshire.
Similarly, Sudhi Pathak, director for finance and operations at Eden Academy Trust, a trust that runs special schools across the country, said it was stuck in an “impossible” situation because of rising energy costs, and that a meeting would take place this week to review options ahead of re-contracting later this year.
“It’s so difficult because we can’t close it for a day, open it for a day - it’s not viable. Closing it would save money but, obviously, money should not be the first object, it should be the kids.
“We’re at a stage where we are having to make difficult choices”.
Simon Knight, joint headteacher at Frank Wise School, a special school in Oxfordshire, said he had no plan to close the school’s hydrotherapy pool, or reduce expenditure in other areas, despite cost increases, as the school had a “duty to deliver” to its children.
“The consequence of the inequitable distribution of special school funding, coupled with years of what we do have failing to keep pace with inflation, means for us there is little room for further increases in costs”, he said.
“There is also little room for meaningful reductions in expenditure without failing in our legal duties to meet the educational requirements of our pupils, as set out in their EHCPs, or risking the safe operation of the school. It places the viability of what we do at risk”.
Pauline Aitchison, chair of the National Network of Special Schools for School Business Professionals, said hydrotherapy pools were “an essential resource” for many special schools, but a “significant cost” to run.
“With rising energy costs schools are concerned about the impact on their budget over the next year and having a hydropool contributes significantly to this. Schools are also commenting on the rising cost of chemicals, such as chlorine, needed to run the pools, and in some cases, it is also becoming increasingly hard to resource this”, she said.
“The rising energy costs along with unfunded pay increases are putting schools under pressure financially and it is hoped the new government will address this to give financial stability to all schools”.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said that schools “urgently” needed to know how the energy support offered by the government would work, and that special schools with hydrotherapy pools would need an “assurance that there will ongoing financial support to ensure they are able to run these vital facilities”.
“We are continuing to press the government on these matters”, he added.
Local authorities ‘working closely’ with special schools
Catriona Moore, policy manager at SEND legal advice charity IPSEA, said that, ultimately, legal responsibility for securing the provision specified in an EHCP “rests with their local authority”, and that if a school could not meet obligations - for example, because of funding issues - “the local authority’s legal duty to secure the provision remains”.
“Schools should challenge local authorities on this, to make sure that every child or young person with an EHCP receives the provision and support their plan says they need - and they should keep parents fully informed about what’s happening”, she said.
A spokesperson for the Local Government Association (LGA), which represents local authorities, said that councils would be “working closely with schools to understand the impact of cost-of-living pressures and rising energy bills”.
They added: “They will always endeavour to ensure that every child on an ECHP gets the best possible education and support they need, within the budgets made available by government.
“We are urging the new government to eliminate councils’ high needs deficits, which would help to significantly relieve the strain on councils’ budgets and enable them to better support children with special educational needs or disabilities”.
Concern over hydrotherapy schools is one of several financial headaches facing special schools at the moment.
Earlier this summer, leaders warned that unfunded staff pay awards would “disproportionately” hit special schools and risk putting them on a “fast-track route to becoming unviable” financially.
Leaders at special schools, which tend to spend more on staffing, said their budgets will be hit particularly hard by pay rises, with one saying the consequences for vulnerable pupils who rely on staff support were “disastrous”.
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “Increases to high needs funding in the next financial year mean that investment will increase by £1.65 billion between 2021-22 and 2023-24 - an uplift of 21 per cent supporting local authorities and schools with the increasing costs they are facing.”
