When it comes to allocating funding for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (Send), the contributions of medical professionals, support agencies and parents are significant. But perhaps the single most influential factor in deciding whether to award money (or hours, or a plan) comes from the evidence provided by schools - and this is largely gathered by Sendcos.
Faced with this great responsibility, we need to be able to navigate the funding maze to ensure we’re doing the best thing for the young people involved.
Bids for Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCP) and top-up funding are not made overnight. First you must gather a significant body of evidence to show that a student is struggling, and that without the additional support of an EHCP or top-up finances they will continue to find it hard to access education and fall further behind their peers. Sadly, the process to access funding is not straightforward and differs with every local authority.
Where to begin
All local authorities offer training on how to access their funding sources, although many will charge for this. However, it is money well spent if it allows you to tap into resources that your school and students would miss out on otherwise. If you’re new to your local authority, or it notifies you that it has changed its process, the training is vital.
Local authorities often request a historical collection of individual learning plans for both types of bid. It’s not uncommon to be asked for three or even four reviewed plans demonstrating the small-step targets students have been set, and whether they’ve achieved them.
This is where most schools worry - if funders see that the students haven’t achieved these targets, does it mean we’re doing a bad job? If we say pupils have achieved them, then why are we making a bid?
But remember that achieving a target may have been an “expensive” project: look at how many hours of support went into getting there, whether that was one-to-one, in a small group, using special resources and so on.
Not achieving the target can paint just as detailed a picture: did students receive a significant amount of support and still not retain the information?
Storing and sourcing the evidence
Many of the young people will have a significant amount of paperwork from a variety of external agencies. Typically, schools are required to provide copies of students’ Send files for EHCP requests - and don’t be surprised if you get asked for a second copy later on. (Always hang on to the original documents yourself.)
More recently, funders have started asking schools for annotated provision maps, either as an alternative or in addition to learning plans. These maps show the provisions that a student has accessed in order to try to achieve their small-step targets. With sufficient detail, provision maps can indicate aims, outcomes, ratio of staff to students and costs.
Comparing conversations
Of course, when we come to write the bids we need input from a variety of people involved in the young person’s care. Primary schools with one class teacher perhaps find this easier than a secondary school where the student meets numerous staff in a week.
Typically, teachers will already have discussed pupils for whom schools wish to obtain funding and these conversations can provide a useful evidence bank. It’s vital to keep a record of what is said, although the professionals involved should also have their own records. While scribbled notes might be sufficient, it is more effective to write down a series of bullet points at the end of each meeting noting the points on which everyone agreed.
You can set up computer programs such as School Robins to collate all the information about a single student in one place without the need to clutter an email box, or risk losing someone’s input. Use a log to keep track of meeting dates and details, and print them easily when required; your school’s management information system or a specialist program should give you options.
If you don’t know how much of these conversations you should be recording, a good rule of thumb is this: “If it was worth talking about at the time, it is worth including.”
The £6,000 question
Schools are required to put in the first £6,000 of notional Send funding for all pupils (academies may find their figure is much higher since the local authority Send pot has already been devolved to their school - often in the region of £9,000). Any efforts to secure funding above this needs to prove that schools have already “spent” that funding.
Every local authority is different and they usually offer updates in the autumn term to define the number of hours they consider to be equivalent to this value. For example, in one local authority you might have to prove the equivalent of 12 hours’ one-to-one support before you can put in a bid at the lowest level.
This doesn’t mean that the student has to have exclusively one-to-one support: it could be 24 hours of 1:2 support or perhaps eight hours of one-to-one support and four hours of preparation for a visually impaired (VI) pupil.
Quality counts
The quality of the bid is often the only way that panels can make decisions. Most local authorities will run a moderation panel where schools can get together and share their bids to make sure they are including relevant information and to get advice from their colleagues.
If your local authority doesn’t run one it’s worth contacting a few local schools and holding your own cluster meeting. It’s here we often learn some key words or terms that seem to have secured one school funding over another.
If your local authority offers an opportunity to sit in on a panel meeting where they make funding decisions, grab it. Otherwise it’s worth asking as most local authorities are happy to oblige. Not only do you get an insight into what they are looking for, you will also see how tricky the process can be when they have only your pieces of paper in front of them with which to decide.
Remember that top-up bids aren’t usually continuous pots of money and that you will need to keep on making bids to ensure ongoing funding. Indeed, funding cuts and changing formulae for calculating the money available to schools and services are likely to make it increasingly difficult to access finance.
Indirectly, financial cutbacks in other services may have an impact on what schools can access for free; in my local authority, I’ve been asked to pay for counselling services because our local Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) can now fund only one round of counselling for children.
Funding for our most vulnerable students is imperative and we must ensure we are submitting effective bids to secure finances and meet their needs. As financial resources shrink, we Sendcos will need to become more proficient hagglers in the marketplace.
Abigail Hawkins is a Sendco at Edukey
Edukey provide outstanding software to help Sendcos succeed. For further information click here.
