Bristol Families Challenge Bristol City Council’s £5 Million Send Budget Cut in Court

Bristol City Council SEND Budget Cuts

Families will be challenging Bristol City Council’s decision to cut special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) funding in the city at a rolled-up hearing next week.

Send budgets are critical for supporting children with disabilities in education. A lack of support not only causes children to fall behind and affect their mental well-being and that of their parents’, it can lead to exclusion, unlawful exclusion, an inability to access education through enforced part time timetables and either voluntary or forced home education.

This month, Independent Parental Special Education Advice  (IPSEA) in response to the Department for Education’s call for evidence into home education wrote:  ‘…there is evidence to suggest that a significant proportion of parents are home educating due to pressure to take their child out of school, from the school or the local authority, often because the child’s special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) are not being adequately supported.’

This week, Kevin Courtney, the Joint General Secretary of the National Education Union slated Nick Gibb’s statement to Parliament concerning school funding. Courtney said that education funding was ‘in crisis’ and Gibbs was ‘ignoring the evidence’.

He said: “Under this Government, schools are experiencing severe financial hardship and having to cut the education provision for children and young people. It is misleading of the Government to claim otherwise. The proof is there for all to see: more and more schools are reporting deficits, class sizes are increasing and it’s becoming increasingly common for schools to ask parents for financial help. The Government needs to start listening, pay attention to the facts and invest in our education system. Without further investment, this crisis will only get worse, which will inevitably drive more teachers and support staff away from a profession.”

In June this year, the School Cuts Coalition along with 39 Local Authorities wrote to the Education Secretary to express ‘deep concerns’ about ‘dangerously inadequate’ Send funding. 

Their statistics showed that more than 2000 children with Send had no education provision at all, with many schools not having enough money to meet statutory obligations. 

One of the mothers bringing the case in Bristol on Tuesday said: “I feel that if Bristol Council goes ahead with these cuts even more children with special needs will not have their needs met, and people will have to fight even harder. I have been fighting for three years. I feel that mums with children with special educational needs from working class backgrounds like mine, who don’t really know how the system works, will just get fobbed off, in the way they tried to fob me off previously.”

Bristol parents have also launched an online petition urging the council to discuss the Send funding crisis in the city. They want to know what the plan is for supporting children with disabilities that will have unmet needs with the funded support cut.