SEND Students Need Fair Funding
Saving a few pounds by switching photocopiers just isn’t enough
- by Nancy Gedge
One of the things you soon get used to when you embark upon a career as a teacher is the public nature of the job. Like other public servants such as nurses, police officers and refuse collection operatives, everyone has an opinion on it, from the lady on the street corner to the most powerful politicians in the land. And right now, opinions are firmly focused on funding.
As the saying goes, money talks, and right now it is shouting loud and long about the looming financial black hole looking schools in the face.
The DfE would like us to believe that the problem of education finance can be saved by back office economies. That is, looking for the best deal on paperclips, photocopying and utilities providers.
But, as everyone knows, the largest proportion of money spent in schools is on staff: their wages, pension and National Insurance contributions. And, as all headteachers know, difficult decisions on staffing are having to be made.
Class sizes are rising (even before you count the rise in pupil numbers); teachers aren’t climbing the pay scale as easily (and those who have can find it difficult to move schools, unless they go for promotion); redundancies are being made, starting with the cheapest – often TAs.
To be fair, fairer funding for all schools and local authorities has been a long time coming. All children deserve an equal chance at their education, in decent school buildings with properly qualified staff.
But – and it is a big but – setting fairer funding against a backdrop of cuts to public spending (are we still calling it austerity?) means that all schools and LAs are feeling the squeeze – and some children in particular are feeling the pinch.
In an age of ever tightening budgets, schools are forced to look hard at where they are spending their money. In an inclusive system, it isn’t hard to see where large wads of it is going.
Disabled children, by dint of their needing more adult support in the classroom, can be a financial drain that some schools are keen to avoid.
I know this because when I took my son, who is disabled, to look at primary schools, I was told by one headteacher that I had to consider what he would be taking away, in budgetary terms, from the other children. We didn’t send him there, if you’re interested. And all this before the credit crunch.
In its response to the DfE’s consultation on a national funding formula, the Local Government Association said that councils must be able to exercise control over allocation of resources to ensure that pupils with SEND receive sufficient funding and that centralising this decision making will put outcomes at risk.
This is not to say that all is bleak and hopeless. There is plenty that schools can do to both make life better for disabled children, and, truth be told, the typically developing, and improve outcomes for all, including families.
It doesn’t have to cost a fortune. Getting your teaching right in the first place is what we are supposed to be doing – although it always strikes me as bizarre that it is called ‘quality first teaching’, as if teaching is some sort of pedagogical box of chocolates.
When it comes to the bottom line, we have the law. Sometimes I think that someone, somewhere, must have a vested interest in keeping parents and schools on opposite sides of a battle line, because if it wasn’t for my role as parent of a disabled child, I wouldn’t know half as much as I do about SEN law and who to ask and where to go for advice.
When schools need to ask for top-up funding for children with SEND, and that child has an EHCP, the law is on their side. Picking the brains of parents like me who have become experts in their children costs a little in terms of time, but could save a fortune. Working together makes all the difference in the world – and kindness and compassion costs nothing.
Nancy Gedge is a consultant teacher with the Driver Youth Trust and author of Inclusion for Primary School Teachers. She has also been TES Teacher Blogger of the Year. Follow her on Twitter at @nancygedge and read her blog at notsoordinarydiary.wordpress.com.
