Mayor Fiaz Saves Money at the Expense of the Most Vulnerable Children. Nobody Knows!

We are anticipating the announcement of cuts totalling £40m. Behind this are the hidden service cuts that have not been announced.

For instance, last year, Special Education Needs and Disability Children (SEND) packages were frozen by the London Borough of Newham. This means that their budgets were not increased while their costs rose.

Costs of support staff in particular rose by around 9%.

This was not because of the nefarious acts of the Tory government. The Government provided a 9.8% increase across all local authorities for funding for SEND children.

Lots of money, they said, for dealing with the 9% pay rise agreed for teaching assistants.

Unfortunately, that funding didn’t take into account the 3% increase in the number of SEND children across the local authority last year. Yet Newham didn’t increase the SEND payment banding for children at all.

Schools were told to make up the 9% shortfall from general school budgets.

So, what is going to happen this year?

The discussion took place at the Schools Forum this week.

Newham suggested a 10% cut in SEND payment banding to schools meaning the schools would have had a 25% cut in real terms, in two years, (as the pay increase agreed to teaching assistants is likely to be around 6%).

Luckily, this was rejected by headteachers on the Schools’ Forum and a 3% increase in those SEND funding packages was agreed. Still, once again, schools are likely to be told to take the extra monies they will need from their general school budgets.

Support staff costs will have risen by 15% over two years and only 3% of additional money will have been provided.

No fanfare, no announcements, the mayor and councillors are silent. Meanwhile, real cuts affect the most vulnerable children in our community.