Räte in England warnen vor Massenkonkurs, während Send -Defizite steigen
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/jun/13/councils-in-england-warn-of-mass-bankruptcies-as-send-deficits-soar
Von pajamakitten
Räte in England warnen vor Massenkonkurs, während Send -Defizite steigen
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/jun/13/councils-in-england-warn-of-mass-bankruptcies-as-send-deficits-soar
Von pajamakitten
9 Kommentare
Having been a teacher, we absolutely need more special needs schools yesterday. Too many kids with severe needs are in mainstream education for no other reason than there is no special needs school nearby that can take them. I taught a girl like that and it ruins everything for everyone: me, her and the rest of the class. It was not helped by the fact that her parents were choosing to ignore how challenging her daughter was finding mainstream education as she got older (even the jump from Year One to Year Two was clearly too much for her). With the number of parents wanting IHCPs growing every year, we need more schools, teachers and resources to deal with the issue. Mainstream education can deal with some kids very well, however we need to admit to.the harsh truth that mainstream education is not the right place for a growing number of children.
If councils are this close to bankruptcy then why are they spending like they have unlimited money? Or do they want to go bankrupt to justify enormous hikes in council tax?
Or maybe it’s just my council and the one across the river spending like that, I can’t speak for every area obviously. I’d be surprised if that’s the case though.
My mother works with SEND students and the stories I hear are horrifying. In some cases dangerous as she has been assaulted twice in the last 4 years.
We need to accept that main stream school isn’t suitable for everyone and not every child is capable of handling it even with all the support you throw into the system, what the answer is I don’t know. But one thing I can see clearly from what I see my mother go through is that it’s doing no favours for the child, school staff and the pockets of the country.
I work in foster care and we see the outcomes of these failures on our children. Many of them aren’t able to cope with mainstream education for a variety of reasons and are dependent on local authorities to support them. Some of them get it. Others are allowed to drift downwards until they stop attending school altogether and end up as young adults with no qualifications and no prospects. It’s really hard to see how often mainstream schools give up on these children because they just have no services to safely support them (don’t get me started on how many rely on technically illegal exclusions to get rid of them).
We’re also seeing more and more children with additional needs, EHCPs and complex trauma. I think this is down to science and social care catching up with children who would ordinarily have struggled and failed or slipped through the cracks of the system, who are now recognised as needing support, and we now know what kind of support they need — it’s just a matter of finding ways to provide it.
We need the state to start actually interacting with reality and not with how things ought to be.
The *majority* of my council’s budget (as in, over 70%) goes to social causes (housing, Send, etc). The rest is divided amongst services like refuse removal, roads, parks, policing, etc, i.e. everything that’s meant to keep the area running for *everyone* who lives here.
Refuse removal used to be weekly, it’s now every fortnight, so the bins sometimes get so full the lids don’t close. Some weeks, black bags are placed next to the bins because they’re too full – which the binmen obviously ignore, and the flat’s governing body then has to get a truck around to remove the excess. But, my council tax went up, *again*. *I* don’t see the benefit of that, though.
As much as the whole Reform DOGE thing is a bit of an eye roller, something *has* to be done on that scale, because there is clearly too much wastage and mismanagement of funds happening in local government. Simply increasing council taxes and paying more and more and more is *not* the solution.
I work for a district authority that’s currently under the two tier set up and in line to be merged in with others to become part of a unitary, and this is one of the things that sends shivers down my spine.
Yes, working with County can be a pain in the arse sometimes, though generally my experience is I get to work with some fantastic colleagues who are excellent at what they do. But my Council is in some respects shielded from the massive LG expenses and demands of education, SC, and highways.
Yes, in the 16 years I’ve worked in local government the funding has probably halved, and contrary to what those who get a semi talking about DOGE think, there is no fat to trim. But at this level the council delivers its services and is highly commended.
If/when we’re absorbed into a unitary with all these liabilities I do worry how it will go.
I worked at a house decorating , and next door was a hotel. heard that the hotel was getting just under 1mill something for a rebuild that was housing migrants. They wanted to start rebuilding but waiting on 100% government funding. As they only gave 20%
They used some of the money to put in expensive cookers that were then stolen the night after. Surprise surprise.
Then I heard that funding stopped. We could not workout if derby was taken over by reform or not. Or if the council just ran out of money.
Either way that’s a lot of money to go chucking at a hotel, for saying the council is broke.
I mean the solution is easy.
Move SEND provision back into the central government funding pot, to reverse the Conservative change that made it the responsibility of local councils, and tipped most of them over the brink.