Who's losing out?
John Freeman
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
The most simplistic analysis of funding for children's services is that it is 'school' and 'other'. School funding itself is being constrained, and headteachers and governing bodies are making unpalatable and difficult decisions. Mostly these decisions are to protect core universal services - with the inevitable effect that discretionary activities and specialist support will suffer.
And 'other' funding - services provided by the local authority - are being squeezed even more severely than school funding. The problem is that local authority funding provides support for activity that is not practicable to deliver at school level; everything from school sports leagues, to school symphony orchestras, to specialist teaching and equipment - no individual mainstream school can employ, for example, an oboe teacher, a swimming coach, or a specialist teacher teacher for visually impaired pupils. And it is these services that are being cut - simply because there is no money to pay for them.
Today I read that a majority of local authorities have cut provision for children with hearing impairments - both teaching and equipment. In the light of what I've said already, this isn't a surprise, but it is deeply disturbing - the impact of these cuts will be that some children who would have been supported with specialist teaching and proper equipment, and who would, as a consequence been able properly to integrate both into their school and its learning, and to achieve well, will, instead, be left in isolation - and this isolation will be life-long, impacting on socialisation, ability to be employed, and personal fulfilment.
On the whole, then, you will be alright if you do not have specialist needs, or if you happen to have affluent parents who can pay for specialist support But if you do have specialist needs, and your parents can't afford to pay, you are more than likely to lose out.
Will the pupil premium help? To an extent, of course it will. But the costs of providing specialist support for pupils with hearing impairments, for example, are much larger than the pupil premium. And what about Big Society? Again the problem is that support costs real money; the specialist teachers need to be properly paid and the equipment needs to be purchased.
And what will happen as more and more schools become academies? Who will make sure (as local authorities should do now) that every child, whatever their needs, gets a school place? I fear that, whatever the fine words of academies, there will be children who just fall between the gaps of admissions procedures. And where the parents are already disengaged from state support, there will be few mechanisms to help.