Issue - meetings

To consider the following Motion in the names of Councillors Burke and J C Lawson;

“This Council notes:

1)    Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) refers to young people who require extra help and support with their learning difficulty and/or a disability that means they need special health and education support;

2)    Private providers play a key role in the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities sector, including early years, alternative provision and specialised independent schools and are often commissioned by councils to provide support and education for children with SEND. In Kirklees, there are 10,098 pupils aged 4 to 16 years with SEND. Of these 9,407 pupils are educated in mainstream schools and settings and 691 in special schools (2022). SEND provision is a key issue for many parents in Kirklees.
Across England, approximately 1.7 million pupils have been identified as having special educational needs, representing around 19.6% of pupils;

3)    There has been a huge surge in the need for SEND provision and, as a result, demand for school places supporting SEND students across the UK. Many state schools are not adequately equipped to meet the increased demand or to support pupils with more complex and challenging needs. This has led to expert providers across the private and charitable school sectors stepping in;

4)    According to House of Commons Library research, commissioned by the Liberal Democrat national party, the top private equity companies providing SEND schooling have seen their annual profits increase as the SEND crisis has worsened, with some making margins of over 20%. Some of the private providers of special needs education are backed by private equity companies based in tax havens or foreign sovereign wealth funds;

5)    The SEND crisis has led to many councils facing exorbitant costs for private provision. This is at a time when local authority budgets are being pushed to the brink, with many facing effective bankruptcy or end service provision for vulnerable groups;

6)    The Liberal Democrat national party has demanded that private providers of special education are subject to an operating profit cap of 8% in order to curb exorbitant profits. The party has called for the Government to cap the profits of these companies to ensure that money is channelled back into the SEND system and not into the pockets of shareholders.

This Council, therefore, resolves to:
Instruct the Leader of the Council to write to the Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson MP, to express concern that the profiteering from private equity firms is a major driver of the crisis in our SEND system and to cap the profits of these firms at 8%, ensuring that the priority is provision and not profits and helping to cut the excessive profiteering off the backs of disabled children. While the Government’s commitment to reform the SEND system is welcome, profit-limiting controls are needed as a matter of urgency.”

RESOLVED – Motion approved.