Peter Aldous outlines the impact of the crisis in special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) education in Suffolk and backs calls for a national review of funding and how we provide this vulnerable group of children and young people with the education that they need and deserve.
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Sir David Davis) on securing this debate, and the Backbench Business Committee for granting it. As in the rest of the country, SEND provision in Suffolk is in crisis. We urgently need a review not just of the funding but of how we provide a vulnerable and very needy group of children and young people with the education that they need and deserve.
Almost daily I receive emails, first from desperate parents unable to secure an appropriate school setting for their children, who quite often receive very little education at all, and secondly from primary school headteachers, SENCOs and staff exasperated at being unable to obtain the support they need and at being asked to provide schooling for pupils who really should be in a specialist setting. The system is broken, and the situation has been exacerbated by inflationary pressures since 2015 and covid. It often takes years to obtain an education, health and care plan, on which there probably is too great a reliance. In the Waveney area, schools and staff are doing great work—including the Ashley School and Castle School East—but we urgently need more local provision and to get away from a model whereby vulnerable young children are driven hours around Suffolk and Norfolk.
In the remaining time available, I shall briefly focus on four funding issues. First, as we heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock), Suffolk receives a very poor high needs block funding settlement. It is based on historical need and bears no resemblance to the needs of today. Local authorities with similar SEND responsibilities receive wildly different and better funding settlements. Suffolk, as we heard, is a founder member of the f40. The funding discrepancies that exist both in my own county and across the country must be evened out as a matter of urgency.
Secondly, it is important not to forget the vital work done by further education colleges, such as East Coast College. For colleges, disadvantaged funding should be reformed to include a specific block to support students with SEND who do not have high needs. For high needs funding in colleges, tariffs should be set at levels that will allow colleges to recruit and retain support staff.
Thirdly, it is all too easy to overlook the bespoke needs of specialist further education colleges that provide education and skills training for those with SEND who are aged 16 to 25. At this stage, it is important to remember that special educational needs and disability legislation requires local authorities to create a local offer from birth to age 25 for young people with SEND. Specialist FE colleges play a vital role and, although they are publicly funded, they are not currently eligible for the capital revenue support to address RAAC—reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete. That inequality should be removed.
Finally, it is great news that a GCSE for British Sign Language is on the way, and I congratulate my constituents Ann and Daniel Jillings on all their campaigning work to make that happen. But there is an acute shortage of qualified teachers of the deaf to teach this new exam. The National Deaf Children’s Society highlights the immediate need to train 200 more qualified teachers of the deaf. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will keep that particular request in mind.
In conclusion, there is a national crisis in SEN provision, and it is felt particularly badly in Suffolk. As a whole, we are badly letting down large numbers of students, their families and their teachers. In that respect, I support the motion. A review of funding should take place without delay.