A growing need
As both the public and private sector seeks solutions to address this complex and emotive challenge.
The Commons Education Select Committee published its report on SEND in autumn 2019.
This report was published post the completion of our research, and its assessment of the SEND landscape makes for sombre reading.
The aspirational 2014 Children and Families Act aimed to transform the educational experiences of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities in Britain.
Its joined-up approach promised to revolutionise the care and support and opportunities in place for young people.
Placing them at the heart of the system and offering a new multi-disciplinary health, care and education pathway.
However, the implementation of the 2014 reforms has not been without its challenges and a difficult funding environment in which local authorities and schools have lacked the ability to make transformative change, which has had a deep impact on provision.
With tension between children’s needs and the provision available, a significant funding shortfall is a serious contributory factor to the failure to deliver on the SEND reforms and meet children’s needs.
Research by The National Education Union found SEND funding granted to local authorities from central government since 2015 has failed to keep up with rapidly increasing demand for provision.
The number of children and young people granted an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP – a legal document stating a child’s legal entitlement to funding for further support for severe and complex educational needs), has risen from 240,000 to 320,000 since 2015 – an increase of 33 per cent.
However, funding for the high needs block (the budget reserved to fund such additional provision) has only increased by 6 per cent over the same period, from £5.6 billion to £6 billion in today’s prices.
Nonetheless, the Department for Education recently announced a £780 million increase to local authorities’ high needs funding.
This has boosted the budget by 12 per cent and bringing the total spent on supporting those with the most complex needs to over £7 billion for 2020-21.
They also have a programme of investment that includes 39 new special schools and alternate provision being delivered.
According to recent government data, the proportion of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) has risen for the third year in a row and it is generally accepted that this trend will continue.
More than 250,000 pupils with the most complex needs are on Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) since the government’s 2014 SEND reforms. Of these children, 120,000 continue in the mainstream system.
However, various pressures are influencing demand for specialist SEND schools, including growing pressure on mainstream schools, rising numbers of children with complex needs, and increased incidence and diagnosis of autism.
Young people with autism are also more likely to be excluded from mainstream schools and thus enter specialist education that way.
SEND schools expanding their remits to cover a wide range of needs and incorporating Children and Adolescent Mental Health services (CAMHs) is also prompting an increased requirement.
The proportion of SEND pupils being educated in private schools has gradually increased, with 7.1 per cent of all SEND pupils now attending independent schools compared to 4 per cent in 2010.
These factors are all fuelling an increase in demand for high-quality SEND provision which is able to facilitate the requirement from parents and provide the facilities to enable children to reach their educational potential.
BB104 is a Department for Education (DfE) document that sets out non-statutory area guidelines for buildings for ages 3-19 at the following education settings: special schools, alternative provision, specially resourced provision and units.
It aims to assist those involved in briefing for and designing new buildings, refurbishment or conservation projects.
The Building Bulletins were designed to create a framework for all local authorities (LAs), diocesan boards of education, governing bodies of schools and all other education providers responsible for commissioning schools, including those for disabled children and those with special needs.
Building Bulletin (BB102) was developed by the Department for Children, Schools and Families.
BB104, published in 2015, is now the current standard for area guidance for SEND and alternative provision.
Where BB102 contained four classifications for children with SEND, BB104 divides children into ‘ambulant’ and ‘non-ambulant’.
However, whilst our participants mentioned the lack of flexibility in the classification systems, the DfE does provide guidance on flexibility within the subdivisions of their guidance, such as in the non-ambulant section which outlines various specialist needs and promotes inclusive environments. Our panel suggested that it would be helpful to see an improved level of flexibility introduced into the guidelines, which included more classifications.
Many felt more classifications which considered the needs of a wider variety of identified SEND might help to ensure that the space provided was appropriate for specific cohorts. BB104 does however address all the SEND designations and a broad range of SEND schools.
The lack of a detailed schedule of accommodation within BB104 was also highlighted as a challenge by our participants, this was particularly true for users who had not used the system before, and/or those who did not have much experience working in the construction sector.
One aspect that the DfE is working on is a more detailed schedule of accommodation tool, which will draw on a large pool of projects currently testing their tool.
They also advised that their current schedule of accommodation and area data sheet tool includes the flexibility required to address the needs of a school. Our panel agreed that a lack of shared insights and experience in working with architects and construction partners to build outstanding schools was one of the primary barriers facing stakeholders – particularly end users, looking to commission or design the best possible school.
The DfE has undertaken post occupancy evaluations in 25 SEND schools and alternative provision across England, with an aim for specific detail to feed into their published public guidance documentation, generic design brief and output specification.
However, it is key that there is an understanding the cohort is ever changing and there needs to be a standardised approach or baseline guidance that is adaptable.
The DfE agree that standardising spaces as much as possible is key, but in such a way that the spaces can be customised. In this respect, mass customisation is vital.
A lack of previous experience delivering these specialist schools also creates a challenge for procurement teams.
Government procurement departments also faced significant time pressures due to burgeoning need for provision of specialist school places.
This conflicted with the extensive time required to determine capital borrowing, land acquisition, and the time required to ensure appropriate levels of engagement and collaboration with all relevant stakeholders.
As such, many local authorities have had to develop knowledge and an SEND strategy from scratch.
This sporadic approach has not allowed for a depth of shared insight and expertise to develop and has created a knowledge gap.
With a lack of repeatable experience available to benchmark or indeed, the existence of platforms on which to share knowledge gained through the delivery of new SEND schools.
While procurement specialists did have access to knowledge sharing networks, this option to collaborate and learn from past projects was not available to headteachers and other stakeholders.
Learnings from previous builds were not shared to provide a blueprint for success that stakeholders without built environment experience could learn from – creating a lack of shared knowledge about the design and construction process.
As the requirement from the SEND cohort continues to grow, knowledge sharing is starting to take place across local authorities and headteachers from different SEND schools.
However, much of this activity is delivered via personal networks or through individual impetus.
No formalised knowledge sharing platforms were in place, as far as our panel was aware.
This lack of a formal platform focused on the sharing of knowledge and experience of delivering new SEND schools, was identified as a particular area of unmet need.
While the headteachers who took part in our research appreciated the challenge of sharing commercially sensitive information, many specifically identified this lack of knowledge and insight as being a barrier to ensuring a best in class result.
