Government protects funding for SEN specialist support services in England

The Department for Education has today confirmed that local authorities will not lose funding for specialist SEN support services in 2012/13 as a result of the academies programme.

This news means that councils should provide services to deaf children in academies free of charge, as for all other maintained schools.

As academies are independent of local authorities, there have been longstanding concerns that the academies programme would drain funding from vital local authority specialist support services for deaf children. Working with the Special Educational Consortium, NDCS has lobbied the Government since 2010 on this issue, and supported a successful amendment to the Academies Act 2010 to protect deaf children’s services. Recognising these concerns and the impact that delegation of funding can have on services to meet low incidence needs, such as deaf children, the Department has now committed to ensuring that deaf children are not disadvantaged by funding reforms.  

Given that the Department for Education has also protected the schools budget, from which these services are funded, NDCS will be demanding that local authorities protect funding for specialist support services for deaf children and robustly challenging any proposed cuts in 2012/13.

More information

NDCS Save Services for Deaf Children campaign

Information for professionals 

In technical terms, the Government has confirmed that expenditure in the line currently referred to as 1.2.2 (Provision for pupils with SEN, provision not included in line 1.2.1) in Section 251 statements will not be recouped from local authorities in the year 2012-13. Full information can be found in the Department for Education's academy funding guide (external website).

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