Spending on Special Educational Needs
and Disabilities (SEND) in England has been rising fast – with a
13% real-terms rise expected this financial year alone. In the
Budget, the government said it would assume full responsibility
for this spending from councils in April 2028. New forecasts from
the Office for Budget Responsibility illustrate the scale of the
financial challenge it faces in doing so: spending is forecast to
exceed available funding by £6 billion in 2028–29 – a gap
equivalent to 9% of the total schools budget. The government will
need to introduce reforms that help to slow the growth in
spending, and/or work out how to cover the difference. Funding it
entirely from the schools budget would be difficult: to
illustrate the scale of the challenge, it would imply larger cuts
to per-pupil spending in one year than we experienced in the
decade since 2010. But paying for a top-up brings familiar
choices: tax more, spend less elsewhere, or allow borrowing to
rise.
A second question still to answer is
how the government will address cumulative deficits in councils'
SEND budgets which are forecast to amount to £14 billion by March
2028 – an amount which could push many councils into effective
bankruptcy. Simply announcing it will write off these debts would
be unwise as it will remove financial incentives for councils to
try to control SEND spending over the next two and a bit years.
Instead, some combination of stricter guidance on provision,
partial write-offs and targeted support to the worst affected
councils, could be a better
option.
Darcey Snape, a Research
Economist at the IFS and an author of the briefing
said:
“The special educational needs system
in England is a mess – with big fiscal costs as well as costs to
children, their families and their schools. New forecasts
published alongside last week's Budget provide welcome clarity on
the scale of the fiscal challenge, and should make the problem
harder to ignore.
But so far, we don't know much more
than we did before the Budget about the plan for dealing with
these challenges. While central government will ‘assume full
responsibility' for funding SEND provision from 2028-29, it's not
actually clear what this will mean in practice. And with a £6
billion shortfall in funding currently projected for that year,
tough choices will be needed to reform the system, and/or to work
out how to fill the funding
gap.
The government also has a set of tough
choices to make regarding the £14 billion of deficits that
councils are projected to have accumulated by
2028. Simply writing off
these debts would be unwise, as it would remove any financial
incentive councils have to try to control SEND spending in the
next few years. But the government will need to find a way to
stop these cumulative deficits from pushing dozens of councils
towards effective bankruptcy when they have to account for them
in April 2028.”
ENDS
Notes to Editor
The hardest questions for SEND are still to be
answered is an IFS briefing by
Christine Farquharson,
Kate Ogden,
David Phillips,
Luke Sibieta
and Darcey Snape.
