Another SEND review (DfE 2019), another report pointing out the woeful inadequacies of the current system from the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (‘Complaints about SEND at “unprecedented level”’, Nursery World, 4 October). Who to blame? Where can we point the finger?
Local authorities hold up their hands in despair at budgets that have shrunk in real terms by almost 50 per cent in ten years (NAO 2018), just at a time when needs increase exponentially. Schools, despite a settlement, told that their budgets next year will be less than 2015 and this all being played out against a background of almost unregulated advertising and pressure on families to buy, holiday and demand flexibility.
You could be excused for thinking that we are in a dystopian Hollywood nightmare – but no, it’s even worse across the Atlantic.
Given the situation for ‘mainstream’ services, it can’t really be a surprise that funding for the most vulnerable is in freefall. If you promise a fair, equal and just society – well, that’s going to cost. As local authorities are forced to think of more creative ways to meet their statutory responsibilities on SEND, children inevitably lose out, and none more than the most vulnerable: the youngest. A £700 million promise is simply prop-up money.
Some services should not be in the ‘political’ sphere. It brings what is important for us as a society into the realm of votes and popularity. You will not be a popular politician if it means that in order to fund early years/education/the NHS/children’s services, you are going to put up tax across the board by 5p in the pound.
If we have decided that these services should be universal and properly equipped to do the job we require of them (think targets for hospitals, Ofsted and CQC) then how can decisions about their funding be made by politicians who always have one eye on re-election and the other on whatever monstrous plan their political party has dreamed up to win the popularity of the electorate?
Take education, as well as many other services, out of politics. Let them be funded cross-party with an adequate budget. There – simple, no blame, no shame, but we do need to accept that we might not have that takeaway curry or gigantic telly. However, it does mean that the most vulnerable who rarely have any say in the matter (and we have a moral duty to do right by) get the support they need when they need it.
