Date: 8 February 2012
Increasing cost of Independent School Places: Implications for Dedicated Schools Grant
Report by Lou Williams
Contact 01245 438848
1. Purpose of report
To provide further information about the increasing pressure on the DSG resulting from pupils with special educational needs being placed in independent schools where there is no suitable maintained provision available.
Schools Forum asked for additional information following an earlier report presented in October 2011. This matter was also discussed at the SEN Reference Group in November 2011.
It was agreed at this reference group that this further report should focus on children and young people with behavioural, emotional and social difficulties and explore alternative options available to the School’s Forum in meeting the needs of this group of pupils in a more resource efficient way. There were a number of reasons for focussing on this group, including:
- At 39% of all pupils placed in independent schools, this group is the largest placed in independent provision;
- The next largest cohort of pupils with challenging behaviour are those with autistic spectrum disorders – this cohort tend to have needs that require more careful matching with provision and hence it may be more difficult to develop additional maintained provision able to meet the needs of a significant proportion of this group;
- A perception among the SEN Reference Group that there is a general acceptance that there is under-provision within the maintained sector in Essex for pupils with this category of need.
2. Recommendations
For Schools’ Forum members to agree to further work taking place to explore in detail the potential benefits of increasing maintained provision for pupils with Behavioural, Emotional and Social Difficulties in the first instance, as this group of pupils represents a significant and growing proportion of children and young people placed in independent provision.
This will include the development of a detailed business case to explore the benefits of developing additional maintained provision, including a full options appraisal. This business case will assist the Forum in deciding whether there is a viable invest to save option for increasing maintained provision for this group of children and young people, resulting from avoiding continuing increases in costs associated with placing increasing numbers of pupils in the independent sector.
3. Relevance to Strategic Plans
This report relates to core business of the Schools’ Forum and the County Council: ensuring that all children and young people are able to access their statutory right to education in accordance with their assessed needs.
4.Finance Implications
The table below provides information on trends relating to pupils with special educational needs placed in independent provision. Confirmed figures for 2011/12 are not yet available. This is because the system used for capturing the numbers and placement costs is changing in this financial year:
BESD / 2008/09 / 2009/10 / 2010/11NO BESD PUPILS IN IND SCHOOLS / 107 / 117 / 122
SOLE FUNDED / 59 / 71 / 73
JOINT FUNDED / 48 / 46 / 49
COST / 4,275,904 / 5,377,937 / 6,002,204
TOTAL ACTUAL IND SCHOOLS / 15,005,726 / 16,033,990 / 17,776,434
NO BESD STATEMENTS / 875 / 921 / 961
TOTAL NO STATEMENTS / 5,867 / 6,107 / 6,306
As can be seen from the above table, there has been a trend of increasing numbers of pupils with statements in the category of BESD, an increasing number placed in the independent sector, with increasing costs.
The average cost for each child or young person placed in independent provision with this category of need in 2010/11 was approximately £49,000 per annum. However this average cost masks significant variations as it includes costs associated with day provision as well as residential, where unit costs are much higher – typically £80,000 per annum.
5. Other Resource Implications
Development of a detailed business case will require significant analysis of data by senior officers to ensure that the cost-benefit analysis is robust and accurate, given the significant sums of public money being discussed.
Given the difficulty in making direct comparisons from publicly available data on the impact of different models of provision between local authorities, there may also be a need to undertake visits to similar authorities [e.g. Kent] to ensure that lessons are learned from experiences elsewhere.
6. Background
At the SEN Reference Group there was a consensus view that we have a long-standing short fall of provision for pupils with behavioural, emotional and social difficulties of some 120 places – equating to perhaps two units of provision.
Previous analysis of the quality of the lower cost provision in the independent sector compared with the quality of maintained provision indicated that the latter was much better in terms of delivering results for children and young people, and was able to do so at a much lower cost. ‘Lower cost’ independent sector provision equates to a unit cost of some £40K per annum, whereas costs in maintained provision was approximately £17K per annum [although it should be noted that our special schools do take a view that they are underfunded at this level].
As noted above, the trend for increasing numbers of statements continues, as does the increase in the numbers of pupils who have behavioural, emotional and social difficulties. For each of these pupils who are placed in non-maintained provision, there is additional strain on the Dedicated Schools Grant, and less funding available to all other schools.
The question that a detailed Business Case would need to answer is whether the capital investment required to develop additional maintained provision to meet the needs of more pupils with BESD could be justified on an ‘invest to save’ basis. If this is the case, capital funding can be identified through prudent investment.
It is likely, however, that increasing provision in this way will be more likely to result in cost avoidance in the future rather than delivering immediate savings. This is partly because even if there were new maintained provision developed immediately, it would not be possible to move settled pupils from independent provision.
Cost is not the only driver that should be considered. On the basis of previously undertaken analysis, the quality of maintained provision was considered better than that provided by the lower cost independent sector. Developing additional maintained provision would also result in more children and young people remaining in education close to their home communities and so experiencing less disruption in important family and peer relationships.
We are clearly at an early stage at present, and a detailed business case would need to address a range of options relating to the model of provision if there is an in-principle decision to take this matter further. For example, models of delivery might include:
- Building special provision attached to existing schools;
- Attaching residential provision to existing NewModelSpecialSchool provision, increasing the range of needs that these could potentially meet.
Current residential provision at Ramsden Hall is only up to year 9; after this pupils are all day pupils. Any business case may want to explore whether there would be advantages to developing increased boarding provision at this facility for older young people.
In preparing this report I have looked at that statistical information that is within the public domain that compares numbers of children with statements between local authorities and the type of provision that the pupils access.
However, from an initial analysis, it seems quite difficult to discern clear links between provision levels, proportions of pupils with statements and the type of resources that these pupils access.
Table 1 at the end of this document provides some comparative information on the percentage of pupils with statements of special educational needs and the proportions of those pupils accessing various type of provision for our statistical neighbours.
Essex has the highest proportion of children and young people with statements of SEN placed in mainstream provision and the lowest proportion of pupils with statements placed in maintained special schools. However it is not immediately clear how these proportions correlate with the proportions of pupils placed in non-maintained provision.
It is likely that it would be useful to organise visits to those local authorities that appear successful in avoiding placements in the non-maintained sector.
Table 2, again at the end of this document, provides trend data for the proportion of pupils with statements of statutory educational needs in Essex and our comparator authorities since 2007.
In Essex, the trend has been a steady increase the proportion of pupils with statements of SEN since 2007. In 2011, 3% of the student population in Essex had statements of special educational need, by no means the highest proportion but above the average figure of 2.77%.
Contrary to the trend in Essex, the mean proportion of pupils with statements across the whole comparator group over this period has been a slow reduction – from 2.84% in 2007 to 2.77% in 2009, then remaining the same over the next two years.
Again, it is likely that visits to those authorities where proportions of pupils with statements are either significantly lower than IN Essex or where the trend is down would be beneficial.
7. Consultation with stakeholders
8. Background / Supporting papers
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Table 1: Provision for pupils with Statements of Special Educational Needs
Authority / % of all pupils with statements / % of pupils with statements of SEN placed in each type of provisionResourced provision in mainstream schools / SEN units in mainstream schools / Maintained mainstream schools / Maintained special schools / Non-maintained special schools, inc. independent special schools
Essex / 3.0 / 2.9 / 1.5 / 54.9 / 30.2 / 5.4
Kent / 2.8 / 8.1 / 9.9 / 21.1 / 46.9 / 5.5
West Sussex / 2.7 / Too few / 10 / 34.4 / 42.6 / 8.8
Hampshire / 2.7 / 2.2 / 0 / 53.8 / 35.6 / 5.5
Worcestershire / 3.1 / 0 / 9.4 / 42.2 / 43.3 / 3.4
Bedfordshire / 3.0 / 7.9 / 0 / 45.8 / 40.8 / 2.9
Swindon / 3.4 / 5.7 / 0 / 45.4 / 36.8 / 3.3
North Somerset / 1.7 / 4.1 / 0 / 37.6 / 47.7 / 6.8
Warwickshire / 2.9 / 0.6 / 0 / 48.9 / 41.7 / 6.4
Staffordshire / 2.9 / 0 / 0.7 / 40.1 / 52,4 / 3.9
Leicestershire / 2.6 / 0.1 / 9.1 / 48.4 / 31.1 / 6
Key: Red cells are the highest values, green the lowest.
Table 2: Trends in proportion of children and young people with statements of SEN between 2007 and 2011
Authority / % of pupils with statements of SEN2007 / 2008 / 2009 / 2010 / 2011
Essex / 2.6 / 2.7 / 2.9 / 2.9 / 3.0
Kent / 2.9 / 2.8 / 2.8 / 2.8 / 2.8
West Sussex / 3.2 / 3.0 / 2.8 / 2.8 / 2.7
Hampshire / 2.5 / 2.6 / 2.6 / 2.7 / 2.7
Worcestershire / 3.0 / 3.0 / 3.0 / 3.0 / 3.1
Bedfordshire / 3.0 / 2.8 / 2.7 / 2.7 / 2.7
Swindon / 3.0 / 3.1 / 3.4 / 3.5 / 3.4
North Somerset / 2.1 / 1.9 / 1.9 / 1.7 / 1.7
Warwickshire / 2.8 / 2.9 / 2.9 / 2.9 / 2.9
Staffordshire / 3.3 / 3.1 / 2.9 / 2.9 / 2.9
Leicestershire / 2.8 / 2.7 / 2.6 / 2.6 / 2.6
MEAN for year / 2.84 / 2.78 / 2.77 / 2.77 / 2.77
Key: Red – percentage higher than previous year; Orange – no change from previous year; Green – percentage down from previous year
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