Sensationalist reporting - whipping up resentment towards education bills for complex SEN placements

[SoFuckingTired]

AIBU to say that the purpose of articles such as this is to foster resentment towards disabled children/young people? Clearly I'm naive but I'm surprised and disappointed that the BBC would report in this way. Yes £2.5m is a lot, but when you actually read further this is a placement for very complex SEN/behaviour spanning several years

Council billed £2.5m for pupil with special needs.

The money quoted for the care of the child is a small drop in the ocean compared to what Leeds city council wastes every year.
They have brought the city to a standstill with the millions they have spent on cycle lanes nobody uses and the pay and expenses they pay themselves.
Biggest set of crooks out there but keep getting voted in.
The biggest issue is their financial mismanagement not the special needs required for children who need specialist care.
As you can tell I don't particularly like them!

Agree with this. One of the unintended consequences of VAT on private school fees. Which will see costs soar and many private providers go bust.

Every single time a thread like this is posted, people come in blustering about how councils are going bankrupt and how there's no "magic money tree" and in THEIR day, autism didn't exist, and shaking their heads about how much SEN kids might cost vs. so-called "normal" students...

...and NONE of them ever, EVER look at the vast amount of money the Tories are losing through what looks very much like corruption.

£1.7 million painting the Prime Minister's planes.
£240 million on this Rwanda "plan" with £50 million to be paid next year.
£22 million for the grand plan of leasing a substandard barge called the Bibby Stockholm
Sunak fucked up and pissed away £12 billion by signing off on the government paying too much interest on public debt
£2.3 BILLION on scrapped parts of HS2
God knows how many BILLIONS spent on unused and destroyed PPE

And here mumsnetters are moaning about how expensive it is to meet a child's needs. Some of you are blatantly ableist about it.

Reminds me of that joke that goes...

Three people are sitting at a table, a banker, a worker, and an immigrant. The banker has eleven biscuits in front of him. The worker has one. The banker points to the immigrant and tells the worker: "Watch out! He wants to steal your biscuit."

Really disgusted with some of you on this thread.

No, they never are, we have semis like that and they literally are like holding pens

We have quite a few children in unregs too who charge whatever they like.

The issue is the amount the private companies charge.
My DS gets a taxi to school, the LA pay a private company to do it. The cost is well in excess of the school fees (specialist independent), a rough guess is at least 2.5 times. In some cases the drivers see very little and most of the money goes to the taxi companies.

My daughter goes to an SEN school in another borough because where I live has no school for children with complex needs, she is not alone in that. In her case it is an LA school not private but the council have to pay transport costs. A few SEN schools were built in my borough by charities such as NAS but not for complex needs, most of the children there are from out of borough. Surely this is an area where costs are increased that could be reduced if only there was joined up thinking?

I think that Kier said special schools would be exempt. Don't know the mechanism as they have been vague.

Yup - bloody dire lack of decent placements out there - but money being made from the ones that are - even when they are crap

Not necessarily, as it could deemed as welfare services due to the SEND. As those are zero rated, the LA wouldn't have to pay it/would be able to reclaim it.

Won't stop the schools adding another 20% on top, but there you go, that's what happens when the profit motive comes into it.

These are humans you are talking about.

All children have the right to an education but no child has the right to the best possible education money can buy. So that's where the debate begins. How should educational funding best be spent? How should it be allocated? How are the needs of the individual balanced against the needs of the many? What's the most efficient use of funding? What's the most effective? What's fair? What's prudent?

And those are really tough questions.

Ugh

Then delete all NT children from education.

How are the needs of the individual balanced against the needs of the many?
What does this mean?

Disabled children don't choose it and parents don't choose it.
A Disabled child has a right to an education there is no balancing? How could u possibly balance apart from deny them an education due to funding and give able bodied person education. And that's a slippery slope , who gets an education and who doesn't!

All children have the right to an education but no child has the right to the best possible education money can buy. So that's where the debate begins. How should educational funding best be spent? How should it be allocated? How are the needs of the individual balanced against the needs of the many? What's the most efficient use of funding? What's the most effective? What's fair? What's prudent?

And those are really tough questions.

This isn't about giving children with SEN and disabilities the best education money can buy! It's about giving children the education that they're legally entitled to.

Some children will need extensive care and support, some children will need 1-1, 2-1 or even 3-1 support depending on need, others will need access to therapeutic services and allied professional interventions.

The debate doesn't start with giving some children the best education that money can buy at the expense of the majority. That sort of rhetoric is highly problematic and (deliberately) ignores the huge issues in the system, the battle parents have to get their children appropriate education provision, and is very much like pointing fingers implying "look, that child with SEN over there, they're the reason your school can't find a maths teacher and has crumbling buildings".

@Tacotortoise it's not the best education money can buy... you make it sound like sen Eton.
It's literally the only education money can buy that fits their needs. Only solved by councils building their own schools that do the same for less.

It really upsets me that people feel like SEN is a drain on councils resources and like a burden in society. These children and their parents didn't choose this life and every child has a right to an education it's not child or parents fault that councils and the government has underfunded and badly managed the special educational needs departmens around uk! If my council didn't spend £1.5 million on taking families to court they would have money to use on support. It seems like its easier to just blame parents than actually look at the reason why we r in this mess.

Yes council's should build their own SEN schools, far more special school places should be available, as should specific support units attached to mainstream school. But even then there will be decisions to be made about how many schools, which categories of SEN or SN (or both) should be aggregated. If money were no object you'd be able to build 20 special schools each with 20 classes to accomodate everyone's needs but that's not what happens is it? So there is a discussion to be had about how good a fit is good enough. And that discussion encompasses both mainstream and special schools.

Maybe if we had the 13 years of funding that we havent had from government and we would be in a better position.

I also think mismanagement is a massive issue.

I have been on MN for many many years and this is hands down the most sickening thread I have ever read in my time here. Some of the most deeply offensive comments have quite rightly been referenced on Twitter. I do hope the authors of some of these ableist, disgustingly disgraceful comments are removed by Mumsnet permanently.
And to think these posters actually consider themselves well-educated whilst demonstrating such hatred, when so clearly devoid of eve a shred of humanity is the beyond sad.
@MNHQ needs to do better here and quickly, threads this offensive on the subject of any other minority group simply would not fly-why is this any different?

I dont know if you have misunderstood the basis on which sen places are awarded. The right isnt for the best education or even a good one, its for a suitable one.

I have 1 autistic child with complex health needs and one nt one. So I'm not as ignorant of the shortfalls of the system as you may think.

Then, how would yo approach special education? My daughter is non verbal with challenging behaviours.

Would you really condemn her to a life of poverty?

Well I'd increase the funding pot for a start and increase the number of specialist school places, home tutors (school places of any kind are jack shit use if your child is too sick to attend) and increase the support available in mainstream. But unless the good citizens of the UK have an abrupt change of heart when it comes to taxation and funding priorities there would still be hard decisions to be made about how to allocate resources and how suitable is suitable enough, for all children.

The UK only has a finite amount of money. Where would you take the funding from? NHS and nurses wages? Dental care which is on its knees? State school & teachers wages? Maybe social care and carers wages? Or maybe we stop subsidising the building of affordable housing? We didn’t build 3,000 affordable houses last year because we capped rent increases at 7%, whilst social housing companies were paying 11% + of inflation costs, so they stopped building.

It’s easy to say tax people/businesses more, but we currently have a system where we have more net detractors than contributors. That’s not sustainable. When you read the rhetoric across most of MN, the general consensus, is everyone apart from me, should pay more tax. Many people say they’d be happy to pay an extra 1% of income tax. To achieve the utopia MN’s would like to achieve, we’d all be about £500 a month worse off. Very few people put their hands up for that.