AT LAST:
After 14 years of austerity the Tory Government in office has recognised we, as a group of nations, have a huge problem of too many children for the schools we already have built and not enough funding within the schools formula to help families with Special Educational Needs children to get the quality of help they require to take them through the rest of their lives.
The Department for Education is now planning to provide thousands of additional school places, and build 33 new special schools, in order to address a "postcode lottery" of SEND provision. The ‘New Model Schools’ some of which are already under construction will be based on the Special Free Schools plan.
When completed and full, special free schools funding is stripped from Councils high level children's services budgets. Those budgets in England already show an £806m shortfall for educating children with special educational needs and stripping out the real higher costs from Council’s budgets leaves the education of mainstream pupils and students in local authority maintained schools open to cuts well below planned expectations if their Council has no funding reserves to replace the cut.
Unitary and County council leaders have asked the Local Government Association to demand a conference call with the Minister for children and families, Claire Coutinho before even more special free school developments get underway in an attempt to ensure mainstream funding is topped up to ensure a ‘Brighter Future’ for all of our children.
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