Heads of schools in Northamptonshire are writing to the council in protest at their new cost-cutting plans, warning they risk the education and safety of vulnerable children in the country.
The bankrupt council has proposed cuts to social care, home-to-school transport and learning disability services as part of a wide-ranging plan to plug a budget shortfall of up to £70 million.
The proposals outlined in the Conservative-led council’s new ‘stabilisation plan’ this week come on top of targets announced in March intended to strip £35 million from this year’s budget.
Tes understands the letter takes aim at the council’s proposals to slash over £1 million of spending on home-to-school transport services, warning that this will disproportionately hurt disabled and vulnerable children, many of whom already struggle to get to school.
Heads are also angry at more than £1.8 million of proposed cuts to social care, which is set to worsen already strained local services, and £3.8 million of savings identified in learning disability commissioning.
Under the new plan, council staff across the board will also be cut by 30 per cent in areas other than children’s social services.
“There are many questions that remain unanswered around the financial situation in Northamptonshire, including millions of pounds of section 106 money which was ringfenced for investment in schools,” Tom Rees, education director at Northampton Primary Academy Trust, told Tes.
“Leaders of education in Northamptonshire believe that vulnerable families and schools should not pay the price for the mistakes made by council administrators.”
The financially crippled authority has already seen its school improvement officer staffing levels drop by 88 per cent 2011-2017, according to figures obtained by Tes.
Several schools made unsuccessful bids to pay for replacement services with grants from the DfE’s Strategic School Improvement Fund (SSIF).
An Ofsted letter in 2016 warned that Northamptonshire education standards were not up to scratch, with primary children performing “particularly poorly” in maths and the Spag tests at key stage 2.
Northampton is not alone in struggling to fund growing demands on social services for children with mental health issues.
Several families are taking Surrey County Council to court over its plan to cut more than £20 million from its budget for special educational needs.
In March the government’s spending watchdog warned that one in 10 councils with social care provisions may exhaust their reserves in the next three years if they keep spending at the current rate.
