Agenda item

Helean Hughes (Director – Education & Skills) will provide an update to Schools Forum on behalf of the High Needs Working Group.

Helean Hughes (Director of Education and Skills) referred to the report contained in Agenda Supplement 1 which updated the Forum on behalf of the High Needs Working Group who were addressing the budget pressures within the high needs budget.  Helean highlighted the following:

·       The Working Group had last met in early September and were due to meet again on 12 November 2020;

·       The Council’s SEND Inclusion Strategy for 2020/2023 was co-produced and was agreed by the Health and Wellbeing Board in September 2020 and included 6 priority areas.  The Inclusion and SEND implementation plan had been developed with partners to address the priorities and the SEND Board would be monitoring the progress of the plan;

·       Alison Enever was appointed as Head of Special Schools Transformation in March2020 and Cate Mullen was appointed as new Head of Inclusion and SEND in September 2020;

·       ISOS (consultants) continue to work with the LA and a Strategic Lead had been appointed;

·       97 additional resource base and Special School places were achieved in 2019/20 and 66 places to be added during 2020/21.  The free school application was successful in Salisbury and £33 million was approved by Cabinet to provide the System of Excellence which included the creation of the North Wiltshire Special School; 

·       The number of EHCP’s continued to increase and the high needs block was forecast to overspend at £11 million;

·       The long term 10-year high needs recovery plan (which assumed a £5 million increase in funding year on year) showed that the movement on the DSG reserve would not start to shift until the latter end of the 10-year period; and

·       The High Needs Working Group would be overseeing the implementation and impact of the financial recovery plan.  A number of planned initiatives had been delayed due to Covid, but most were now back up and running

Councillor Jane Davies referred to the list of Local Authorities with deficits (Wiltshire being 66^th on the list) and asked Gemma Donnelly (DfE) what plans were in place to address this and when they might happen.  Gemma responded that the party line was that they were aware that the high needs issues were massive and that it was a ministerial priority and that was shown by the increased funding that was received this year but there were no promises as yet if that were to continue.  The issue was not going away and was on the radar of the ministers and the Secretary of State.  There was currently a spending review going on and the Department were in talks with the Treasury to ascertain their envelope of funding before this could be passed down to LA’s and then schools.  High needs were already on the agenda and then Covid hit and they were aware that schools were having additional costs and the DfE would be gathering evidence of that.  Although they could not guarantee the £5 million funding, there was no appetite within the department for the funding to be reduced although there were obviously demands from other departments because of Covid and that should be borne in mind.  The High Needs spending review was delayed slightly because of Covid but the green paper should be out this side of Christmas.  They had submitted a bid for High Needs capital and had good evidence to support that.

The Chair reported that it was continually hard to report an overspend on the High Needs block when in reality it was underfunded in the first place and that 50% of the pot related to historic spend and not current need.  And previously that the budget had been based on children aged 5 -16 and then moved from 0 to 25.  He felt that it was hard for the Director of Education & Skills to manage such a tricky budget that was underfunded rather than a mismanagement of the budget.

Helean reported that she was glad to hear from Gemma about the bid for capital for high needs and asked how that might be accessed/allocated.  Gemma confirmed that this was currently being considered by the Department as to the best process for this.

Councillor Laura Mayes asked if the DfE acknowledged the level of work that Wiltshire were doing to try and make systemic change and improvements to SEND.  Gemma confirmed that the DfE were aware of this and following her discussions with Officers prior to the meeting she noted that the authority had a good grasp of its pressures and had a good handle on that.  This was appreciated by the Department.

Resolved:

That Schools Forum note the update report on the high needs’ budgets.