Creating more specialist places in mainstream schools will require extra funding and will not result in significant savings in the short term, leaders have warned ministers.

Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, has raised concerns after education secretary Bridget Phillipson highlighted creating bases in mainstream schools as a way to bring down costs amid spiralling special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) deficits.

The government is facing questions about how it will make the SEND system financially sustainable after it announced in the Budget that the cost of provision would be entirely covered by central government spending from 2028 onwards.

Labour is set to announce plans through a Schools White Paper next year, which will aim to make mainstream schools inclusive and ensure more pupils attend a local school.

Phillipson points to lower transport costs

Speaking at the Commons Education Select Committee last week, Ms Phillipson was pushed to provide more detail on the solutions being considered to address council deficits relating to SEND spending.

Getting this wrong could be “catastrophic”, Conservative MP Rebecca Paul said.

The only example Ms Phillipson gave in response to Ms Paul’s question was creating more specialist provision in mainstream schools.

The education secretary told MPs: “We know, for example, that if we can create more specialist provision in mainstream settings, that is better for children, it’s what parents want, because they want their child to be able to go to a local school. But it can also have the impact of reducing transport costs alongside that.”

She added that some local authorities that are in a stronger position financially “have often, over a period of a decade or so, made some of these changes that have sought to bear down on the costs”.

It was also reported that Ms Phillipson had made a similar point in a message to Labour MPs after the Budget, telling them that “more local specialist places reducing demand for travel/more costly private provision” would help to bring down costs.

‘Unrealistic’ to expect short-term savings

Mr Di’lasio acknowledged that having more pupils with SEND in mainstream schools could result in “longer term” savings, and could have the “effect of reducing transport costs and the pressures on special schools, making the system more sustainable”.

However, he warned: “It is likely that this would require a massive increase in specialist SEND units and resourced provisions in mainstream schools. At present, there are 449 schools with SEND units and 1,217 with a resourced provision.

“Establishing this type of provision at a greater scale across the education system is likely to require substantial investment, staff training and will almost certainly take years to implement.”

Mr Di’lasio questioned how much the creation of specialist places in mainstream will help the government to move to a more sustainable system by 2028, when it absorbs all SEND provision costs.

“Any idea that this could deliver significant savings on the national SEND budget by the time of the next Spending Review in 2027, enabling the government to reduce local authority deficits landing on central government spending in 2028-29, is unrealistic,” he warned.

Establishing specialist provision in mainstream

Headteachers running specialist provisions have also suggested that more funding and major changes will be needed to establish specialist provision in mainstream schools.

Amanda Hulme, headteacher of Claypool Primary School in Bolton, which runs a SEND unit, points to the need to support both creating the facilities and training staff.

She said her school was able to run a unit as it had a spare classroom after a bulge year of pupils had moved onto secondary school.

However, she told Tes: “Even with the space available, that’s not a cheap thing to do. You can’t just set up a room and put some cushions in it and hope it’s going to be OK. It’s got to be a specialist setting.

“We had a classroom, but it needed to be adapted with specialist toilets and changing facilities: all of that costs a huge amount to adapt.”

She also pointed to the need for more training for teachers working in specialist provisions in respect to curriculum planning and for pupils with medical needs.

Wider reform of SEND system

Dave Woods, headteacher of Beaconsfield Primary School in Middlesex, which runs a specialist resourced provision, said that system-wide savings could be found if “there was a much wider reform of the whole SEND system rather than a piecemeal approach”.

He added: “You can’t just say that we are going to open up a lot of small specialist bases and say that schools will stop using one-to-one teaching assistants for pupils with education, health and care plans because a lot of schools won’t stop doing that.

“And there is an upfront cost that has to be funded to create more places, there is a capital cost, a resourcing cost, and it will take several years for any potential savings to filter through.”

The government announced £740 million to create more specialist places in both mainstream and special schools in December last year.

At the Public Accounts Committee this week, the DfE’s director general for schools, Juliet Chua CB, said this would create around 10,000 more places.

And last night the government announced that £3 billion would be spent over the four year spending review period creating tens of thousands of specialist places in mainstream schools.

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