Proposals contained in the Department for Education's schools funding consultation suggest introducing a basic level of funding for every pupil deemed to have "high needs". This annual base funding will be set at £10,000 - comprised of the £4,000 funding that all pupils require and a further £6,000 to account for any additional needs.
Any pupil whose needs cost less than £10,000 in total would not be deemed "high need", so would have to be supported through mainstream funding for schools.
Yolande Burgess, director of strategy at London Councils, told CYP Now that the proposals fail to account for local requirements, such as high staff costs in the capital.
"We are concerned that this could result in a significant amount of funding being shifted out of London without a strong evidential basis," she said. "We need to make sure that the whole system is supported by sufficient funding from central government, so we think that funding for SEN pupils merits far more detailed consultation."
The SEN green paper, published in March, outlined the government's ambition to create a system that provides children and young people with individual education, health and care plans from birth to the age of 25. But Burgess warned that the schools funding consultation treats preand post-16 funding as separate.
"The SEN green paper was very open about how you build packages of support, yet the schools funding consultation is looking at schools funding in a very isolated way," she said.
"We have to tackle that issue of how we get a far more streamlined system that helps people have that birth-to-25 process. We have to think of schools funding in the context of personalised budgets and pooled funding."
Lorraine Petersen, chief executive of the charity Nasen, questioned whether the new system for SEN funding would equate to a cut in cash for children with mild to moderate SEN. Funding for lower level SEN is expected to be rolled into mainstream schools funding.
Petersen said: "Schools need to be accountable to make sure the money gets spent on the right children. I'm unsure whether there's going to be enough money in the system and how that is going to be spread out across schools."
A Department for Education spokesman said funding for pupils with SEN has always been allocated through the overall schools budget and will continue to be distributed in this way.
"The additional funding set out on in the consultation is for those pupils with complex special needs, reflecting the extra support that they require," he said.
"In addition, we are conducting a joint review of pre- and post-16 SEN funding to make sure that we align arrangements."
SCHOOL FUNDING
- The government is consulting on plans to introduce a new system for funding schools, likely to come into force in 2013/14
- The Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) currently provides funding to local authorities to pay for schools, early years provision, pupils with special educational needs (SEN) and alternative provision
- The government wants to make the way it funds these services more transparent, by giving councils three separate sums of cash for schools, early years and high needs pupils, which includes SEN and alternative provision
- The consultation suggests a basic level of funding for every pupil deemed to have "high needs"
- This annual base funding will be set at £10,000, comprised of the £4,000 funding that all pupils require and a further £6,000 to account for any additional needs.
