The government must work with councils to implement the SEND reforms and provide more funding details, as the current system is “vulnerable”, the Local Government Association has warned.
If the SEND system overhaul is not properly funded, it risks “rationing support and shifting blame onto schools” instead of fixing the “broken system”, parliament’s education committee has heard.
The introduction of tiered levels of support, SEND training for all teachers, and 60,000 new places for children with SEND are among the reforms to the special educational needs and disabilities...
The government must engage with the looming impact of greatly increased SEND home-to-school transport costs, the County Councils Network insisted while publishing its estimate of the future financial...
The government has confirmed it will write off the bulk of local authorities’ historic SEND deficits following the publication of the final local government settlement – however councils warned the...
Eight in 10 councils will be unable to set balanced budgets if SEND deficits are not written off and the provision system is not reformed, the Local Government Association has warned, reiterating its...
CIPFA has urgently called for a comprehensive long-term plan for local government, particularly for SEND support, after its latest Financial Resilience Index highlighted mounting financial strain...
New community-based early SEND intervention through Best Start Family Hubs will be rolled out by 2028, the government has confirmed, in a move it said will deliver faster and earlier support.
Questions over who funds special educational needs and disabilities provision – and how much it will cost – remain unanswered despite the government outlining a series of reforms in the Budget, the...
Substantial plans for reform of special educational needs (SEND) funding announced in the Budget have been welcomed as a substantial step forward in addressing the crisis facing local authorities as...
Mounting debts from supporting children with special educational needs and disabilities effectively “hidden away” in council accounts could lead to nine in 10 affected authorities issuing a Section...
Councils are struggling to meet their legal duty to provide home-to-school transport in the face of mounting pressures which have seen budgets overspent by over £400m.
Local government reorganisation risks exacerbating the “immense” financial strain under which councils are already operating, according to the chair of an influential parliamentary committee.
Mounting pressure on special needs and disabilities support is threatening education services’ financial resilience, the National Audit Office has warned.
The share of children receiving support for special educational needs and disabilities has doubled, driving a “dramatic and ongoing” increase in spending and leading to councils amassing an...
A local government finance shake-up represents an encouraging opportunity to fix many of the sector’s longstanding issues, but experts have warned the proposals published thus far still lack...
Councils have warned that they will remain under “severe financial pressure” despite a more generous than expected settlement that will see core spending power rise by 2.6% from next year.
Prolonged uncertainty in the wake of the Spending Review over the handling of mounting high needs deficits is causing “massive concerns” among local authorities, the government has been told.
Councils have warned they face financial catastrophe in a year’s time unless the government takes action to remove “unmanageable” high-needs deficits from their balance sheets.
More than half of councils with education remits face Section 114 notices when the temporary fix keeping high-needs spending deficits off their main balance sheets expires next year, according to new...
Interventions by CIPFA and the Education Policy Institute lay bare the issues facing the English system of support for children with special educational needs and disabilities, and suggest ways to...
