Purpose

Proposed
decision
 
The Cabinet Member for Education and
Skills:
 

APPROVE the funding arrangements for the Communities of
schools’ process as per
Key Decision and as set out in this report.

APPROVE the transition arrangements of the Special Educational
Needs (SEN) funding system for state funded schools between April
2025 and September 2026.

NOTE that the development and establishment of the long-term plan
to adopt an overarching SEN funding policy and system, will be
subject to further governance and decision making in consultation
with schools.

DELEGATE authority to the Corporate Director of Children, Young
People and Education, in consultation with the Cabinet Member for
Education and Skills to implement the funding arrangements for the
Communities of schools process as per
Key Decision - 24/00026 - The Locality Model for Special
Educational Needs Inclusion

DELEGATE authority to the Corporate Director of Children, Young
People and Education, in consultation with the Cabinet Member for
Education and Skills to proceed with transition arrangements,
between April 2025 and September 2026.

DELEGATE authority to the Corporate Director of Children, Young
People and Education to take other necessary actions, including but
not limited to entering into contracts or other legal agreements,
as required to implement the decision.

 
Reason for the
decision
 
At the Children’s, Young
People and Education Cabinet Committee on 16 May 2024 a suite of
reports on the county’s Special Educational Needs and/or
Disabilities (SEND) Transformation were presented, one of which
related to the structures that would support increased local
collaboration,
(Report Pack - Item 8a,
p53-80).
 
After
public consultation (Locality
Model for Special Educational Needs Inclusion | Let’s talk
Kent) the decision
was taken in August 2024 by the Cabinet Member for Education and
Skills to proceed with the Locality Model
implementation.
 
Part of
adopting the Locality Model for SEN Inclusion (also known as
Communities of schools) was to establish how the High Needs Block
(HNB) of the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) would be allocated to
mainstream schools in Kent to support the implementation of the new
locality model, to meet the conditions set out in the

safety valve
agreement 
with the Department for Education (DfE), and to ensure the
effective allocation of resources to schools to further deliver
improvements for children
 
Recent reviews of
Special Schools (CYPE
Cabinet Committee 21st November,
points 8.4 & 11.6.2 and
16th May) and Specialist Resource Provision
Review (CYPE Cabinet Committee
16th May) also considered the suitability
of the current funding systems for both education settings and
shared principles for possible new funding models. These findings
have been considered in developing these proposals.
 
 
Background
 
Kent County Council
(KCC) is responsible for the distribution of SEN funding to schools
& colleges to enable a pupil or student with high needs to
participate in education or training (referred to as High Needs
Funding (HNF), Element 3, or top-up funding). This funding is
expected to be fully funded from the HNB of the DSG, provided by
the DFE.
 
The method for
allocating SEN funding to support pupils & students in either a
mainstream schools, SRP or special schools has not been
fundamentally reviewed for a significant number of years, with the
last funding review of special schools and SRP taking place in
2010, and mainstream school funding review in 2018.
 
The combined spending
on SEN top-up funding in mainstream schools and the total costs of
places in SRPs and Special Schools equates to approximately 57% of
the total High Needs Grant Income in 23-24. Therefore, it was
important to review the current system for allocating funding to
state-funded schools, and whether it still aligns to and supports
the aims of the wider SEN transformation programme in Kent
(including actions identified in both the Accelerated Action Plan
and Safety Valve).
 
Options (other options
considered but discounted)
 
Three other options were
considered:
§ 
to maintain the current funding systems
§ 
to implement a Tariff funding system
§ 
to implement a Locality Model funding
system
 
Option one was discounted as
unsustainable for Kent. Existing systems for allocating the funding
from the HNB of the DSG are not currently
performing well in Kent. There are currently three different
systems for allocating SEN funding to support children attending
either special schools, SRPs or mainstream schools which has led to
a lack of transparency and equity as to how funding is allocated to
settings for children with comparable requirements for support or
specific provisions. This is also being reflected in the increase
in exceptional claims for individual children in SRP and special
schools, where their average funding rates are no longer
sufficient. The current system is also heavily dependent on the use
of the identified “primary need” of a child to
determine the funding rate which is being impacted by waiting times
for diagnosis and does not reflect the level of support required.
During the time these systems have been in operation, the
level of overspend on high needs has continued to increase, with
higher numbers of ECHPs being requested and demand for more
specialist provision continuing to increase, whilst previous
OFSTEDs have identified SEN outcomes were not being
achieved.  This further indicates how
our current methods for distributing SEN funding to schools is not
sufficiently aligned to meet the required levels of support.
 
Option two was discounted as a
viable ‘one single’ model for Kent due to tariff
systems[1] tending to be used in
conjunction with individual funding allocations for children (those
with EHCPs) rather than for wider operations and funding of SEN
Support in mainstream. The inflexibility this system would bring
were considered too restrictive for SEN Support services in the
county and would be a risk to the improvements already achieved in
schools so was considered to be unsupportive of innovative use of
resources (for mainstream) if used on its own. Merits were noted
however in the stability a tariff model could offer smaller cohorts
of pupils with higher levels of need.
 
Option three was discounted as
a viable ‘one single’ model for Kent because the
flexibility was considered too much for the whole system at the
current time; the county needs higher levels of financial oversight
and accountability due to the sustained levels of overspend in the
HNB. Merits were noted however in the innovative and adaptive way
it could serve mainstream schools for pupils with wider support
needs.
 
Proposals were then developed
combining elements from options two and three into a single funding
system for Kent. The system will utilise the structures of
Communities of schools to deliver a flexible Community budget that
can be used to fund SEN support services (including specific
funding allocations for the support of individual children and
other specific SEN services) alongside the use of a tariff funding
structure to support the allocation of specific  funding to schools for pupil’s with more
complex needs that looks at the adaptation of provision that might
be needed.
 
How
the proposed decision supports Securing Kent’s Future
andFraming
Kent's Future - Our Council Strategy 2022-2026
 
Undertaking this work will support Framing
Kent’s Future through:
 
Priority 1: Levelling Up Kent and our
commitment to maintain KCC’s strategic role in supporting
schools in Kent to deliver accessible, high quality education
provision for all families, specifically:

-      
Maintain improvement support
services for all Kent schools, including maintained schools and
academies, to maintain Kent’s high-quality education
system.

 
Priority 4: New
Models of Care and Support and our commitment to support the most vulnerable
children and families in our county, specifically:

-      
Respond to national policy changes
on SEND provision, work with SEND families to rapidly improve the
service provided to SEND children and work with mainstream schools
so more can accept and meet the needs of children with SEND,
increasing choice and proximity of school places.
 
Undertaking this work will support Securing
Kent’s Future by:

-      
Supporting Objective 1 in bringing the budget back
into balance through cost avoidance achieved by supporting more
children in mainstream schools from the outset of their statutory
education and avoiding the use of non-maintained independent
special school placements.
 

-      
Objective 3 looking at policy choices and the scope
of the Council’s ambitions maintaining discretionary services
that add value and support outcomes the council is seeking to
achieve, where we must be more rigorous in assessing the value of
those services, and where necessary re-scope the council’s
ambition and interventions to something that is proportionate and
affordable.
 

-      
Further transforming the operating model of the
Council (Objective 4) through a greater focus on understanding and
demonstrating impact will enable more effective decision making
about how and where to focus the use of resources.
 
Financial
Implications
 
Total spending on
mainstream top-up and SRP & Special Schools Places is forecast
to be approximately £225m in 2024-25. Top-up funding for
mainstream schools is forecast to be approximately £50m and
includes funding for SEN support services for individual children
(equating to approximately 40% or £20m) along with funding
for children and young people with an Education, Health, and Care
Plan (EHCP). Total funding for SRPs & Special Schools places is
approximately £175m of which £80m (46%) relates
specifically to Element 3 top-up funding, whilst the remainder
relates to core placement funding (not the subject of this
proposal). This is funded from the HNB of the DSG which is a
specific ring-fenced education grant from the DfE.
 
KCC is one of a number
of Local Authorities which have a DfE Safety Valve Agreement to
support with the highest overspends on SEN services to achieve a
financially sustainable longer-term position. Kent’s annual
overspend on the High Needs Block had progressively grown to over
£50m by 2022-23, resulting in an accumulated deficit of
nearly £150m. The agreement meant the DfE would make
additional contributions of £140 million, alongside an
£82 million contribution from KCC itself, to pay off the
estimated accumulated deficit and help to balance the high needs
budget by 2027-28. In return for this, KCC must implement actions
intended to resolve the in-year overspend and achieve future
financial sustainability. The Safety Valve agreement has avoided
the need for KCC to otherwise impose up to £222 million of
spending reductions on SEN services over the equivalent period. The
Kent Safety Valve agreement states:
 
“The authority agrees to implement the DSG management plan
that it has set out. This includes action to:
3.1.
Implement a countywide approach to ‘Inclusion
Education’, to further build capacity in mainstream schools
to support children and young people with SEND, thus increasing the
proportion of children successfully supported in mainstream
education and reducing dependence on specialist
provision
3.7.
Ensure there is sufficient and consistent capacity across the
county to support children with severe and complex needs in their
local area where possible
3.8.
Develop a school/area-led approach to commissioning of SEN support
services (Locality Based Resources), to better respond to the needs
of children and young people with SEND”
(page 2 and 3 DfE DSG ‘Safety Valve’ Agreement:
Kent)
 
Kent must implement a
sustainable approach to HNF to meet the DfE Safety Valve agreement
and to ensure financial sustainability in this area moving
forwards; the proposed SEN funding model in conjunction with the
wider locality model is expected to build the robust governance and
monitoring processes required to implement the necessary new
approaches outlined in the agreement through the use of one
overarching funding model  across
mainstream, SRP and special schools.
 
Legal
Implications  
 
Local Authorities must
follow government guidance on distribution of their HNF Block and
work under the SEND Code of Practice 2015, these guidance documents
were used in the development of the funding model proposed. Links
are provided below in the ‘Supporting Documents’
section.
 
Under the Children and Families Act 2014 KCC
has a duty to ‘to support the child and his or her parent, or
the young person, in order to facilitate the development of the
child or young person and to help him or her achieve the best
possible educational and other outcomes’.
 
Advice will be sought
from Legal Services as required during the implementation
phase of the decision.
            
 

[1] Tariff system: a set of rules and funding
levels

Decision

As Cabinet Member
for Education and Skills, I agree to:
 

APPROVE the funding arrangements for the Communities of
schools’ process as per
Key Decision and as set out in this
report.

APPROVE the transition arrangements of the Special Educational
Needs (SEN) funding system for state funded schools between April
2025 and September 2026.

NOTE that the development and establishment of the long-term plan
to adopt an overarching SEN funding policy and system, will be
subject to further governance and decision making in consultation
with schools.

DELEGATE authority to the Corporate Director of Children, Young
People and Education, in consultation with the Cabinet Member for
Education and Skills to implement the funding arrangements for the
Communities of schools process as per
Key Decision - 24/00026 - The Locality Model for
Special Educational Needs Inclusion

DELEGATE authority to the Corporate Director of Children, Young
People and Education, in consultation with the Cabinet Member for
Education and Skills to proceed with transition arrangements,
between April 2025 and September 2026.

DELEGATE authority to the Corporate Director of Children, Young
People and Education to take other necessary actions, including but
not limited to entering into contracts or other legal agreements,
as required to implement the decision.