The overall theme of yesterday's Budget announcement was to increase public spending, and SEND was named as a specific recipient of some of that.  We haven’t heard that kind of rhetoric for some time and it will be cautiously welcomed as a start by children and families with additional educational needs, as it is by us. This said, extra funding will only ever be a sticking plaster without proper reform of the SEND sector.
 
But it is the lack of nuance to some of the policies which is a concern for those who require the level of support offered by Prior’s Court and organisations like ourselves.  Much very high needs, highly specialist, SEND provision, for children and young adults, is delivered by charities.  Prior’s Court was established by a voluntary donor, from charitable income, to deliver on purely charitable aims for autistic young people with complex needs.  We are entirely publicly-funded by Local Authorities to deliver education and care to young people whose needs cannot be met by the state, topped up by a relatively small but important amount of charitable fundraising which pays for the capital investment that has been denied to the state sector.  Charities like Prior’s Court are not public schools that qualify to be charities, we are actual charities.
 
However, despite being publicly-funded to provide a public service, we will bear the increased costs in taxation designed for businesses (the rate at which employers will pay NI contributions and on what salary level). This will either result in less provision if Local Authorities cannot fund, or an increase which transfers directly from the Local Authority to the Treasury without pausing for breath in the school’s accounts. This would be fine, as long as it is recognised, budgeted and accounted for. Or this would also be fine if there was some mechanism for recovery from the Treasury, à la VAT reclaims on EHCP places. However, we don’t see any signs of either of these.
 
We hope that what could very well be a small but positive step forward for the majority of children and young people with additional needs in education, does not harm the prospects of those with very high levels of need, who, as ever, are left unseen and unconsidered.  We also trust that the increase in costs, which will benefit neither the school or its students, is not portrayed as poorer value for money.

Ryan Campbell,

Prior’s Court Chief Executive Officer