Funding pressures putting children with SEND at risk of missing out on nursery school places

The findings come from a survey by Early Education carried out last month, which are released ahead of a meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Nursery Schools, Nursery and Reception Classes, which takes place today (Tuesday).

It shows increasing demand for places in nursery schools from children with special educational needs and (SEND) in the current school year, or for starting in September. 

Responses to the survey were received from 101 maintained nursery schools that between them support 1,445 children with SEND.

More than nine in ten (91 per cent) of those that responded said they had seen increased demand for places for children with SEND.

Early Education said that maintained nursery schools have high levels of expertise in supporting children with SEND, and support a higher proportion of children with SEND than other early years settings.

They also tend to admit children with complex needs that other settings are unable to support, it said.

However, the financial impact of the pandemic, on top of long-term underfunding, is threatening nursery schools' capacity to offer this provision, raising the risk of increasing the number of children with SEND unable to secure a suitable early years place.

Early Education said that at the same time, headteachers are reporting rising numbers of children with SEND who have also been impacted by the pandemic, creating greater pressure on an early years system which has long struggled to provide enough places for children with SEND. 

Staffing cuts and budget deficits​ are also reducing their flexibility to provide the support needed for children with SEND. 

The survey shows:

• Funding constraints were expected to affect most schools’ ability to support children with SEND due to extra funding for children with SEND having reduced or being harder to obtain (41 per cent).
• Staff cuts being made as a consequence of schools’ wider financial difficulties (36 per cent).
• Just over a quarter (26 per cent) of schools said their ability to accept children with SEND was unaffected by funding constraints in the current or next school year.
• Cuts made by local authorities to funding for specialist provision/reserved places/assessment centres (17 per cent).

Even those maintained nursery schools that were able to accept as many children with SEND warned that funding constraints were having an impact on quality, or that they had taken a decision not to turn away children with SEND despite the impact on staff. 

Early Education’s chief executive Beatrice Merrick, said, ‘Government’s failure to put in place adequate funding for maintained nursery schools is eating away their capacity to support the most vulnerable children.

'Fewer children with SEND having the high-quality early childhood education and care they need will impacts on their life chances. It will mean increased costs for the Exchequer when early intervention opportunities are missed, and will have knock-on effects for the primary and special schools as children move on to the next phase.’

In conclusion, the report says, ‘The evidence from the survey is clear that maintained nursery schools are facing an increase in demand for places for children with SEND and often with complex needs, while facing reducing resources both in their mainstream budgets and in the amount of high needs funding available.

‘Staffing cuts and deficit budgets are reducing their flexibility to provide the support needed for children with SEND.

‘There is an urgent need to increase the amount and allocation of high needs funding in the early years, and to put in place the long-promised long-term funding formula for maintained nursery schools which is needed to allow them to provide support to high numbers of children with SEND who would otherwise have nowhere else to go.’

Commenting on the findings, Jack Dromey, MP for Birmingham Erdington, and secretary of the APPG, said, ‘During the pandemic, a whole generation of our country’s children has been deprived of the education their parents expected and their children deserved. The role of our state-maintained nursery schools, the jewel in the crown of our early years provision, has never been more important.

'The failure to address their funding needs has had a detrimental impact on children with high needs in particular. If the Government is sincere in its commitment to levelling up opportunities across the country, with support for SEND children at the heart of this agenda, the long-term funding issues must now be addressed. Action is urgent and we look for firm commitment in the forthcoming Comprehensive Spending Review.’