Mainstream is usually much cheaper, with ‘similar or better outcomes’ for disabled pupils, MPs are told

The most senior civil servant in the Department for Education (DfE) has told MPs that educating disabled pupils in mainstream schools is usually much cheaper and produces “similar or better outcomes” than using special schools.

Susan Acland-Hood, DfE’s permanent secretary, told the public accounts committee on Monday that improving support for children with special educational needs (SEN) in mainstream schools was “very near the top of the issues that are raised whenever I go out into schools and whenever I speak to teachers and heads”.

She was responding to questions from Labour’s Nesil Caliskan, the MP for Barking in east London, who had asked her to confirm that it was “much better in terms of value for money for the taxpayer to support our mainstream schools so that they can adequately meet the needs of children in terms of SEND*” (watch from about 17.06).

Acland-Hood (pictured) told the committee she was “very careful about not implying that we think literally any need can be well met in a mainstream school, but we do see needs that are well met in mainstream in some places and not so much in others.

“And in that case, we do tend to see much lower costs for meeting needs in mainstream and similar or better outcomes.”

Caliskan, who was leader of Enfield council for more than six years, warned that the cost of meeting the needs of disabled pupils could “tip hundreds of local authorities over the edge in the coming months”.

She told the committee that the cost of supporting pupils with SEND was “by far the biggest single pressure” facing councils, alongside social care.

Caliskan said the cost of transporting disabled pupils to distant special schools was also causing a “particular pressure”, with some facing journeys of more than an hour.

Juliet Chua, DfE’s director general for schools, said the new government’s reforms aimed to “make sure that children and young people’s needs are being met in schools that are within their local communities”.

But in the short term, she said, DfE was working with local authorities to address the “very significant” increase in the cost of home-to-school transport since 2015, from £0.6 billion to £1.3 billion, a real terms increase of 77 per cent.

The committee also heard concerns raised by MPs about the difficulties faced by parents in securing an education, health and care plan (EHCP) for their disabled child.

Caliskan said: “Not a week goes past without me being contacted by a parent who is at breaking-point, who describes to me the process of trying to fight for a plan for their child.

“It is the job of a parent to do the best they can for their child, but at the moment, the system means they are fighting against it and it is causing a huge amount of stress and anxiety and it is too often the very families that need the most support that are finding themselves not able to get the plan they need for their child.”

Acland-Hood said it was “rational to chase plans” under the 2014 Children and Families Act so the idea that securing a plan was “the principal route to having your need met” is “going to have to be something that we, with ministers, look at”.

Labour’s Luke Charters said that 98 per cent of EHCP appeals were decided in favour of families, which he said “feels to me like a two-stage process that inherently actually favours better-off parents with the financial means to go to tribunal”.

He added: “The broken appeal systems is making it harder for poorer families, isn’t it?”

Acland-Hood said this headline figure of 98 per cent should “should give us all pause” although only “about two and a half per cent of appealable decisions go to appeal”.

But she said there was “a risk that [the system] favours those who have got the capacity to navigate” and “we don’t think that very adversarial processes is a positive feature of the system or one we should build on”.

She said the system currently encourages families to seek an EHCP as “more resource in the system goes towards supporting those who have statutory plans”.

And she said it becomes “more and more rational for as many people as possible to keep seeking those statutory plans because there’s less resource left for the people who haven’t got them.

“And breaking out of that vicious cycle has got to be an incredibly important part of what we seek to do and that’s why we’re focusing so hard on the support that you can get in the system without having to go through plan writing or assessment processes.”

Labour’s Anna Dixon said parents in her constituency were being “forced” into considering special schools because they could not secure the right support in a mainstream school, even if they had an education, health and care plan.

Acland-Hood said ministers had made it clear their “core focus” was on “really improving inclusive mainstream”, or “what every school should be able to do for a child with some needs that differ from their fellow pupils”.

She said this included supporting “resource-based provisions” that allow disabled children “to spend some of their time in mainstream classes and some being supported outside, which again, we think is a positive model” although such provision is seen “very variably across the country”.

It was an approach that was confirmed by schools minister Catherine McKinnell yesterday (Wednesday) in a speech at the Schools and Academies Show in Birmingham.

Acland-Hood told MPs on Monday that ministers still wanted to ensure “that specialist provision is available for those children for whom that is undoubtedly the right place to be”.

Helen Hayes, the Labour chair of the Commons education committee, said parents had “very, very little confidence in the ability of schools to deliver SEND support, that schools are struggling to do so, and that the government is behind on the recruitment of, and training of, SENCOs**”.

She asked what DfE was doing to “ensure that higher quality SEND support is more consistently available in mainstream schools”.

Chua said that “improving the offer through inclusive mainstream is absolutely the heart of our approach”.

She said civil servants have been “talking to ministers in some detail on this” and will bring forward further plans.

But she said they had already spoken of how they would look to remove the barriers to accessing the curriculum and assessments for children with SEN, and examine the role Ofsted plays in “promoting and getting very, very good practice on inclusivity”, while they were also “absolutely doubling down on high quality teaching” for disabled pupils.

*Special educational needs and disability

**Special educational needs co-ordinators

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