High needs funding arrangements for Southend maintained schools and academies Consultation by the Director of Learning Introduction This document sets out proposed changes to how high needs top-up funding is passed to state maintained schools in Southend. It sets out the background to the current situation, issues with the current system, and proposes options of how these may be resolved. In addition it looks at a possible way of releasing top up funding to schools without the need for an EHC needs assessment. The consultation includes questions on the proposals set out and on the options and how to introduce them. The outcome from this consultation could be 1) Continue specifying LSA hours in EHC plans. or 2) Introduce Banding a) for new plans while continuing with LSA hours until individual EHC plans are amended. b) For all EHC plans and covert the LSA amount to an equivalent band and fund at that rate from a set date. and 3) Introduce ‘SEN Support Plus’ to fund top-up support without an EHC needs assessment. You can respond to this consultation on the survey section of the Southend Learning Network, or by email to [email protected]. When responding to the survey you will need to confirm that you have read this document and are responding on behalf of the governing body of the school, or have permission to respond on their behalf. Therefore the first two questions of the consultation relate to this. The deadline for response is 21st December 2016. Consultation questions 1. Have you read the document ‘High needs funding arrangements for Southend maintained schools and academies’? 2. Do you have permission to respond on behalf of the school? SECTION1 Background and current situation Prior to April 2013 Southend schools were expected to put in around 5 hours’ worth of LSA support for SEN pupils, both at School Action Plus or statement level. Southend LA paid for the support specified in a child’s statement if they attended a Southend school, no matter which LA issued the statement – this was then recouped from the child’s LA at a later date. Southend LA allocated some of its SEN funding to build on the 5 hours LSA available at School Action Plus with the use of additional delegated funds (Action Plus STAR). This provided schools with more flexibility in using their SEN budgets and allowed them to be more proactive in providing help at the earliest opportunity. For pupils with statements in primary school, Southend LA specified the funding it would provide to the school based on the equivalent number of hours of LSA, on top of the 5 hours at School Action Plus, for the school to meet the child’s needs. The LSA rate was agreed by schools forum. For pupils with statements in secondary schools, Southend allocated a support band (A to E) which provided the school with a specified amount of money to support them to meet the child’s needs. In April 2013 the government introduced changes to how schools and LAs were funded to meet the needs of SEN pupils. This was part of a wider plan to align and simplify how schools and further education colleges are funded by the Education Funding Agency (EFA). The Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) given to the LA to fund all schools and academies was split into 3 notional blocks – the Schools Block (SB), the High Needs Block (HNB) and the Early Years Block – the size of the blocks were based on prior spending in the LA. It was at this point the notional SEN budget from which mainstream schools and academies were to provide the nationally prescribed threshold per student per year of £6,000 was introduced. Where a child had a statement the school still had to provide the £6,000, and the LA that issues the statement would ‘top-up’ the support to the cost of the support on the statement. Southend, in line with many LAs stopped using bands for secondary schools and moved all statement funding to be equivalent to a number of LSA hours. Southend determined that £6,000 was equivalent to 12.5 hours LSA support per week and the LA would pay for all hours above this. Other LAs applied their own methodology, for example Essex calculate total cost of LSA hours specified and deduct £6,000. Funding given to all maintained mainstream schools and academies across the country included the notional SEN element. In Southend it was agreed by schools’ forum to move some funding from the HNB to the SB to compensate this additional burden on schools. Funding for special schools and resourced provision in mainstream schools was also changed at this time. These places are funded on a ‘place plus (top-up)’ approach. The top-up is based on bands one of two bands for units and one of three for special. All new statements were issued with funding specified as equivalent hours of LSA. Due to the differences with Essex, with agreement from the schools forum the LSA rate has since been increased and the number of LSA hours equivalent to £6,000 is now deemed to be 13. Children who require support in early years settings is also specified as a number of hours. This is in addition to the usual ratio of staff to pupils, which depending on age can be as low as 1:4. When EHC plans were introduced in September 2014 the funding mechanism remained and plans specified hours of LSA. As statements are being converted to EHC plans and should not exist from April 2018, the rest of this consultation document will only refer to EHC plans but you can read this to include statements that have yet to be converted at this point. Reasons for change Evidence suggests that LSA support is not the most effective way of supporting the majority of children, mainly as it reduced the amount of teacher time they receive. In fact studies have shown the more LSA support pupils received, the less progress they make1. SEN children in school that use a variety of ways to support them often have better outcomes than those where the majority of support is provided by a 1:1 LSA. Despite this evidence parent feel that individual attention, most often requested as 1:1 LSA support, is the best way to support their child. This starts when children are in nursery and can continue even into further education. This clearly goes against the ambitions of increasing independence and resilience to prepare children and young people for adulthood from the earliest years stated in the SEND Code of Practice2. The text in EHC plans states the support is intended to be equivalent to the number of LSA hours and not all delivered as individual LSA support. However, stating what is effectively a cash amount given to school to use in the best way to meet the child’s needs as LSA hours increases parental expectation that this is how the support is intended to be used. Parents often put pressure on schools to provide this type of support, as they feel unless their child has the number of LSA hours specified, their child is not receiving the support as set out in the EHC plan. There is also a perverse incentive for those schools that do use flexible approaches to meeting pupils SEN to put in 1:1 support in order to justify how the additional resource are being spent on that child. The rate used to fund LSA hours is different in Southend to Essex, as is their way of calculating the amount of top up to play. This has caused issues when Essex schools invoice the LA for a child’s support. This can also cause problems when schools invoice other LAs for LAC living in Southend. 1 http://maximisingtas.co.uk/assets/content/dissressum.pdf 2 SEND Code of Practice, p124, para 8.5 Early years setting receive funding which if used as 1:1 can increase the child’s dependence and set the expectation for parent from an early age that 1:1 is the best way to support them. There is currently no consistent methodology or criteria used to determine the support band for children and young people placed in special schools and resourced units. This could mean the same child having a higher value of top-up in a resourced provision than if they attended a mainstream school. Funding bands Not specifying the support as LSA hours may reduce parental expectation this is how the support must be delivered, and encourage schools to use more flexible approaches with their most needy pupils. One way of doing this would be to simply put a cash value in the EHC Plan, but while this method is used by some LAs, it can cause expectation problem of its own. Another method, used by a large number of LAs, is the type of banded funding model used at secondary schools in Southend prior to April 2013. A number of LAs, including Essex are proposing to move towards a banded funding system across all their schools and units. Introducing a banded funding model (or retuning to it for secondary schools) should help to remove some of the issues highlighted above. A band of support can be allocated to a child based on their level of need and consistently applied across schools and settings, whether mainstream or resourced unit (and potentially special school, however this is not currently included in this proposal). The current mainstream unit funding bands 1 and 2 would link to 4 and 1 respectively.