SEN funding.....how does it work now??

[TICKLETUMBLE]

I know things changed and school is supposed to provide up to 15 hours on Action Plus.

DS school told me that all funding they had for DS has been pulled since the change in SEN arrangements in LA...........I cant believe this is true....they have SEN budgets right?

Is it that they are being forced to use the SEN budget already allocated for SEN now as additional funding from LA has gone.

I know it is expected that my SA request will be rejected on the grounds that school can provide an additional 5 hours support now and they will expect that to be in place and being shown to be inadequate...but they wont entertain giving the extra hours due to funding probs.

Ok, they are right, in a sense. But completely wrong in every sense

Every school is given a notional SEN budget. This is derived from a funding formula, based on certain characteristics of the school and pupils in it. In general, the idea is that SEN will be spaced throughout the LA, so all schools will have SEN.

Now, schools are expected to fund the first £6000 of any needs for children with SEN from their own budget. However, remember my previous paragraph - they've already been given an SEN element on top of their base funding to do this with.

The perception will be that they have to use 'their budget' to fund SEN, because they have got used to seeing the budget as a whole, and haven't ring-fenced the SEN element for SEN.

You should be able to view the budget of your DS's school online, and that will show how much is allocated for SEN.

So, for DD2's school, for instance the notional SEN budget is £47,257.

This is the guidance note from Hampshire LA (they are generally seen as a 'model' LA for practice):

"15) Notional SEN statement
The notional SEN budget is the element of a schools delegated budget allocated for its SEN provision. This is calculated on an annual basis and will not change for the financial year regardless of any children with SEN joining or leaving the school during the year.
The notional SEN is not intended to be used exclusively for those pupils in the school with statements but to enable the school to make the necessary provision over and above the standard offer of teaching and learning for all pupils. The notional budget simply ?earmarks? an element of the schools budget share using proxy indicators with no additional funding is attached and as a purely notional sum it is not a fixed sum that can be ?used up?.
From 1 April 2013, if a child has a statement of special educational needs, this will put them into the category of being a high needs pupil, and the school is responsible for funding the first £6,000 of the provision in the statement, which equates to 12.5 hours of support assistance per week.
The SEN service will allocate any additional funding over and above this amount identified to meet the child?s needs. So, for example, if a pupil?s statement has 20 hours of support identified then the school will have to fund approximately 12.5 hours from their delegated budgets and then may receive up to 7.5 hours top-up from the SEN budget.
This will be the case regardless of the type of SEN the child has. From April 2013 there will no longer be a distinction between high incidence and low incidence statements.
Additional allocations will be coded to gl code 7691."

How do we access that information, Lougle? Is it published by the LA somewhere?

Please email ipsea about this and perhaps your MP. I have heard lots of similar stories and need reporting. I don't think ipsea has done anything yet but if it gets lots of parents complaining it may do. Appeal any refusal re SA on basis school not meet needs from own resources. I'd also be writing to school confirming what they have said about having no funding and not providing hours of support etc and cc sen officer.

It should be published by your LA. In Hampshire (my LA) there is a 'find a school' section, and you can look at the budget for any school in the LA, the number of children in each year group on roll, etc.

Put all that they told you into writing to 'clarify that you understood correctly'.

They may well 'apologise for any misunderstanding and assure you that all will be as it was before', in their written reply.

I agree. In fact, I might offer to apply for a Statutory Assessment, as the school clearly can't meet your child's needs from within their own budget....

Can I ask what I'm sure will seem like a silly question...when you all refer to hours of support / assistance is this 1:1 support specifically for your childs individual needs or would group learning support be classified as a certain amount of support in this context. Thx sorry to butt in. Really useful info in this post thanks all.

It depends on the child's needs and the environment. For instance, DD1 goes to special school and doesn't have 1:1 support routinely. However, her class has 10 children, 4 teachers, plus the odd volunteer, so there are plenty of opportunities for 1:1 support and very small group work.

Thank you

Hi can I ask a question, how does this differ from before? Did the LA provide all the funds for statemented children. And is this the same for academies? I am hoping to get my son into ss but his school are very encouraging to myself and others to go down this road. There has been a definite change in mood around SN inclusion.

Ps financial accounts may be on school web, I found ours on there, after much searching!

It's not so different iirc.

Schools have always been expected to fund a certain level of provision themselves from the SEN budget they were given for this purpose. However the policy varied from LA. Those with more delegated funding were expected to fund more, after all they'd been given the money to do so.

What's happened now is that ALL LAs are being told they have to give MOST of the SEN money to the school for them to manage themselves. But this money isn't ring-fenced so they don't HAVE to spend it on children with SEN (especially if their statement isn't clear).

The further issue is that many schools OVERALL budget (particularly those in affluent areas) has been reduced. So I think schools are seeing the non-ring-fenced SEN money as a way to make up their shortfall/avoid redundancies/referb the gym.

To be fair to schools, the old system gave the impression that they 'only' got money for some types of SEN. It worked like this:

School budget £100,000
SEN devolved budget: £20,000
-------
Total available £120,000

Then, schools were told this:

"Some SENs are very commonplace. We call these SENs 'High Incidence'. This means that any school could and should expect to have some children with these SENs at any time. We have factored this into the devolved SEN budget, so those children will not attract any money from the LA. These SENs include SpLD, EBD, SLI, MLD, etc.

Some SENs are less commonplace. We call these SENs 'Low Incidence'. The incidence is less predictable across the LA so we will fund those separately. Those SENs are, for example, CP, VI, HI, etc.

A child with a high incidence statement who has severe needs, requiring over 15 hours TA support per week will be funded by the school up to 15 hours, from the devolved SEN budget, and will receive a top up from the LA"

Schools then got the message that some SENs 'didn't come with any money' when in fact the money had been given via devolved SEN budgets.

The tricky bit comes here:

SEN funding was not ring-fenced. The devolved budget was notional - that means that a formula was used to derive the budget, based on the area the school is in, the pupil numbers, etc.

If a school had, say, £10,000 in their devolved SEN budget, but only had 1 child with mild SEN, taking £1,000 of resources, then they had £9,000 spare to pretty up the flowerbeds.

Now, they've tried to level the playing field. MS still get a devolved (notional) SEN budget. Out of it schools must pay the first £6000, regardless of how that £6000 needs to be spent (TA time or resources, equipment, etc.)

Special Schools get £10,000 per pupil (So the £4000 place cost, as MS, and the £6000 initial statement money) because they don't get a 'notional' SEN budget, as it's accepted that all the pupils have SEN at statement level (it's a requirement of a place). Then, each pupil is audited to see if they need a top-up amount in addition to the £10,000. DD1, for example, is likely to only get the £10000 as she doesn't have huge physical needs, no adaptive equipment, MLD and is well suited to the teaching style so doesn't need 1:1 or 2:1 for behaviour, etc.

But why should anyone be 'fair to schools'. It is their JOB to know and understand the funding.

Parents should not be pointing this out to them, and besides, they don't very much listen to parents anyway.

To make matters a lot worse, ASD is considered high incidence, correctly. But what is missing is that 'some' ASDs carry an associated high cost.

So schools get very little for children with ASD, regardless of the fact that many are amongst the most complex children they might have.

And the bottom line anyway, is that it is totally illegal for a school to say 'Sorry, we won't be meeting your child's educational needs any longer because the funding has been cut'.

Thanks for all the repsonses. I have e-mailed the school to ask for clarification...maybe I was confised or misunderstood ...

Indicated I felt it unreasonable for the LA to insist on school providing provision without providing the funds to do so, particularly as now schools are expected to provide 15 hours support if needed.

Just getting things as they understand it in writing will be interesting...

How depressing. I will know if my son has a ss place this time next week. At the very least, a finalised statement.. Keep your fingers crossed for me. Good luck up the OP, hope you get things sorted. I am praying I get to walk away and draw a line under the last two years.

Got confirmation that the funds they had for DS in addition to the 'usual' funds in the school budget had been taken away.
The school SEN budget is spread over a greater than 'average' number of SEN children in DS school, so they run out of funds when it comes to DS needs...or something.

Bollocks.

Did you get that in writing?

Schools don't get 'average' amounts of money. Their SEN intake is taken into account (amongst other things).

Why did it run out just before your ds? Why not someone elses child?

I am facing similiar issues to TICKLETUMBLE. DD is on SA+ and gets nowhere near 15 hours support per week. ( If that is 'measured' as 15 hours TA support, even allowing for school paid for SALT support, which obviously costs than a TA rate, but DD only has 30 minutes a fortnight). BUT I am told by the School that more funding is 'not there' for DD. The school cut her SALT from 30 minutes each week and they seem to think they would need extra funding to give DD any more TA time. (She gets a maximum of a couple of hours a week).

On an earlier thread you told me lougle that the point of a statement was to provide support that was beyond the School's resources. As far as I can see this is a big downside to the new SEN funding arrangements. Schools have more in their notional SEN budget but my problem (and Tickletumble's) seems to be getting the school to accept that they have the funding to meet the first £6000 of SEN for our children. Like Tickletumble I 'shouldn't' get statutory assessment for DD if her needs can be met by the support the school has already been funded to provide.

And I know the route to try and get the School to meet their SEN duties - I've done it for my DS2. And when the governers refused to 'use their best endeavours' to meet his SEN we took them to the tribunal for disability discrimination and won. It took over a year to get that result and, unlike a statement, it gives no legal protection for DS's needs.

I would want a statement for DD to 'protect' her rights to having her SEN met - even if that costs less than £6000 and the School should be paying. I don't want to be forever challenging the School's erroneous claims that 'funding has been cut' and that the funding for my child has gone. It's an awful position to be in. At present I am waiting (having asked before half term) for the Head (who is also SENCO) to even come back to me with a date for a meeting to discuss support for DD following her ASD diagnosis and the ed psych report.

yes, I have it in writing......... they used up the SEN budget but DS requires more. I shall be keeping the e-mail... for future reference.

The request for statutory assessment is in progress , but without having the 15 hours of support and showing it is not adequate they are likely to refuse......................

I too am facing issues similar to panettone. Dd has dx of gl