Bridget Phillipson says children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are too often being sent to specialist schools far from home at “extraordinary” cost and hints that private providers face profit-limiting controls.
The education secretary makes clear she wants more children with SEND to attend mainstream schools as part of efforts to bring down a ballooning bill – but insists that her first concern is improving educational outcomes.
The number of children with SEND rose by more than 100,000 in the last academic year to 1.6 million. Councils warn that without action many will be bankrupt when the costs of the provision come back onto their balance sheets next April.
In an exclusive interview with The i Paper, Phillipson insists that she is determined to improve the outcomes for children even as she cuts costs. A package of reforms is due to be unveiled after the Spending Review in around June.
“The first principle of SEND reform is better outcomes for children with SEND – their educational outcomes are not as good as they should be. We are spending vast sums of money on a system where parents have lost confidence, where children are not getting what they deserve. This will involve more mainstream inclusion.”
One issue, she says, is that under current arrangements many have to travel far from home to special schools, often run by private providers. The current taxi bill alone is £1.8 billion a year and is projected to rise to £2.2 billion in the next three years.
“The costs are extraordinary, but crucially, children are being sent considerable distances away from their friends, away from their family and local community, and they’re not having the same school experience that most children would expect, which is the chance to walk to school, to be with your friends, to be part of the local community.”
She says measures to curb profits of private providers – as has been done in residential children’s homes – are part of the “wider reform” and hints more funding for more state-run provision – closer to home – to reduce reliance on privately-run schools may be needed.
“Well, at the spring statement, the Chancellor did set out her recognition that in some areas of public service, reform, in order to make the system better, you do have to spend up front.”
She cites a primary school in Barking and Dagenham, east London, which she says is a model of how mainstream inclusion should work.
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“They’re not facing the same pressures, because over a 10 year period they have created more specialist provision in mainstream. People got on and did it. They recognized the value, and they got parents behind, behind the reform.”
“Meeting some of the parents was the most powerful part of it. One dad told me that he now saw a way through into adulthood for his daughter, that she would be able to live an adult life, hopefully with a job, being able to live in her own home, whereas before he just didn’t feel that there was a way through for her.”
