North Yorkshire gets less than half national average for special schools
Education bosses say the county only receives 46 per cent of funding to build and extend special schools
Education bosses in a county with soaring numbers of children with Social, Emotional, Mental Health (SEMH) plans have revealed the county only receives 46 per cent of the national average funding to build and extend special schools.
North Yorkshire County Council says it receives the country’s lowest level of funding per pupil for special schools despite data evidencing the county has significantly less specialist provision than is available in an average local authority.
As a result, North Yorkshire County Council says creating a school to support young people with significant SEMH needs in Hambleton and Richmondshire has become “an urgent priority” for the Government as it considers how to distribute its £2.6 billion programme for expanding special school provision.
A meeting of the council’s executive on Tuesday looks set to see councillors approve a bid for a share of the funding to cover a new 120-place academy-run special school at former school site on Grammar School Lane, in Northallerton.
The same meeting will also see the leading councillors consider increasing day places at Brompton Hall School, Scarborough and add provision for Special Educational Needs pupils at Caedmon College, Whitby to add to the provision it offers at Forest Moor School, near Harrogate.
Since 2015 North Yorkshire has seen a 131 per cent rise in pupils with Educational Health Care Plans compared to a national increase of 97 per cent.
An officers’ report to the executive states the relatively limited funding it has received to build or extend special schools has left the authority facing a challenging task in expanding provision for SEMH pupils.
It says the council’s two specialist schools for SEMH pupils, Brompton Hall and Forest Moor, are both “a considerable daily travelling distance” from the Northallerton and Richmond and that talking to parents about sending children is challenging as both the schools are currently rated inadequate by Ofsted.
The report states: “Consequently, we have been placing youngsters with SEMH needs in independent special schools with places in those provisions typically costing £60,000 to £70,000 per annum compared to an annual cost per place of £23,000 in the council’s special schools.”
The report states the new school in Northallerton for children aged eight to 16 would enable the authority to support more pupils in appropriate local specialist provision while reducing the ongoing financial pressure on the high needs revenue budget.
The authority says it is “well aware that there are sensitivities within the local community” about how the Grammar School Lane site is used and developed, and that “it is entirely appropriate that those views are factored into the future plans for the site”.
The report concludes: “Our site development work indicates that the scale of development we are proposing would not require the full site to be assigned to the school development, with this assessment taking into account the need to rectify the shortfall in outside space currently available to Mill Hill Primary School on the site.