Cash-strapped councils are attempting to fill their financial black holes by charging families of disabled college learners for transport, an FE Week investigation has found.

At least six councils across England have begun consulting on the proposals over the past year, with some asking families to pay as much as £933 per year.

Campaigners and sector leaders hit out at the “unfair” plans and accused the councils of treating young people with special education needs and/or disabilities (SEND) as “scapegoats” for their budget-cutting measures.

They say the policy will create more barriers to education and will make “marginal” savings to councils’ growing budget deficits.

The Local Government Association has warned that almost one in five English local authorities could be forced to issue a section 114 notice this year, meaning they are unable to balance their budgets.

Middlesbrough, Somerset and Dudley councils warned this week they are heading for section 114 notices and would join the likes of Birmingham, Nottingham and Croydon councils who have recently declared they are unable to balance their budgets.

Post-16 SEND transport typically involves taxis or minibuses for learners who cannot travel by public transport on their own or with a guardian.

Councils can opt to fund post-16 SEND transport as they do not have a statutory obligation to provide free or subsidised travel to learners over school leaving age. They do however have a duty to arrange a transport policy for young people up to age 19 but are entitled to charge for the arrangements. They should also prioritise young people with SEND up to the age of 25.

Clare Howard, chief executive of the National Association of Specialist Colleges (NATSPEC), told FE Week that post-16 transport is the “easiest thing” for councils to cut because of the lack of statutory obligations.

Eleanor Wright, legal officer at SOS! Special Educational Needs, said it was “certainly true that LAs generally looking for savings are trying to limit school and college transport costs, especially in areas where it is discretionary”.

The latest guidance from the Department for Education from 2019, says local authorities can ask families to contribute to transport costs but ensure it is affordable and allow support for those on low incomes, such as the 16 to 19 bursary fund, administered by education providers.

Specifically, the DfE guidance said that transport policies should not adversely impact particular groups. 

“For example, as young people with special educational needs and disabilities are more likely to remain in education or training longer than their peers, any contribution sought from these families would need to allow for the fact they may have to contribute for longer,” it states.

The Kent conundrum

Kent County Council this week became the latest council to propose post-16 SEND transport cuts to help address a £54.2 million shortfall. According to KCC’s latest transport expenditure documents, it spent £2.3 million on post-16 SEND transport in 2020/21, a drop from the nearly £2.9 million spent in 2019/20.

But the council said the cost of providing SEND transport for over 16s has risen in recent years, and the number of learners requiring an education, health, and care plan (EHCP) in its area has soared by 80 per cent since 2018.

“The provision of transport for this group is inevitably more complex,” a Kent County Council (KCC) spokesperson said. 

“KCC remains one of the last councils to offer such a broad discretionary post-16 travel policy, over and above what is required by law. While we have worked hard to continue this position for many years, it cannot be maintained at the expense of fulfilling our statutory duties to all learners.”

In November, the council approved the introduction of a £500 fee per SEND learner per annum from 2024/25, discounted to £299 for low-income families. 

The £500 so-called financial contribution is the same as what families spend on a Kent 16+ Travel Saver transport pass. The council reaped almost £1.5 million from mainstream post-16 transport charges in 2020/21.

Hayley Harding, a SEND campaigner from Let us Learn Too, said: “It just seems like another way of almost scapegoating disabled kids’ families, rather than actually dealing with the problem. I think it’s going to be a blanket [charge] as well, so it’s not necessarily based on needs.”

Combined with a measure to reduce the offer of transport for post-19 students, the policy will save £781,000, according to Kent County Council’s revised draft budget outlined last week.

The policy will continue to make savings for the council from its transport budget into subsequent years: £541,000 in 2025/26 and £300,000 in 2026/27.

Marginal savings

The Oaks Specialist College in Kent criticised the measure as being at the expense of the education of young people with SEND.

Chief executive Gordon Tillman said: “We fully understand the financial pressures that all local authorities now face and are sympathetic to the situation that they have been placed in by central government. 

“However, making marginal savings to a multi-million-pound budget at an expense to young people with SEND and their families will not solve any of these financial issues and will only create more barriers to the much-needed continuing education and the ‘lifelong learning’ that this country and the economy needs.”

Elsewhere in the county, Rebecca O’Neill, chief executive of Brogdale CIC Group in Sittingbourne, said it is seeking to source its own minibus – a £20,000 to 25,000 cost – as a response to the policy change but hasn’t found one yet.

She added that asking parents to pay for transport could result in a drop in attendance.

“Asking families to pay for the transport with little to no lead in time and no ability for services to change, set up new provisions and with no funds available to do so is not fair or right,” she told FE Week. 

“Also, it may force the larger colleges to diversify their offer and push out of the market the smaller providers.”

The change has meant more stress and bureaucracy on parents with SEND children. Nicola, a Kent-based parent with a 19-year-old daughter at Ripplevale specialist college, said disability benefits do not cover everything families must spend.

“Everything feels like a constant battle, in all honesty,” she told FE Week. “Children with special needs already cost families more money than children without these needs.”

Slew of councils rolling back SEND help

Meanwhile, Havering Council in London is proposing to introduce a charge for post-16 transport assistance to address a £3 million deficit in its transport budget.

In 2023/24, it spent £467,960 on post-16 SEND transport.

The council’s preferred option, like some other councils, is to expand the use of the personal transport budget, which could pay towards the cost of booking a taxi, or a travel pass, or ride sharing. The budget currently amounts to £9 per day, with a maximum of four journeys per day.

Havering Council told FE Week that it will be taking results from a resident’s survey to a cabinet meeting this March.

Elsewhere, Shropshire Council is due to decide on its proposed removal of all discretionary home-to-school travel assistance.

In 2022/23, the council spent £543,281 to send 106 post-16 SEND students to specialist FE colleges. It asks for £933 in contributing for the transport a full year, and £299 for families on benefits, to the £5,223 average cost per year of providing the service.

Documents show that of this year’s 104 students, 65 are paying the higher rate of contribution and 39 students paying the lower rate.

At the time, Kirstie Hurst-Knight, Shropshire Council’s Cabinet member for children and education, said: “Nobody wants or likes to change or withdraw services or funding, but – as is well known – across the council we are having to make savings in the face of severe budget pressures.”

A Shropshire Council spokesperson said: “No decision has yet been made to the future of SEND school transport. We are currently undertaking engagement activities with our local SEND communities to work with us to develop ideas and possible solutions so that SEND transport supports those with the greatest needs and delivers better outcomes for children and young people with SEND and their families.”

Other councils include Brighton and Hove City Council who voted in November to charge £547 a year towards the cost of taxis and minibuses for SEND transport.

Around the same time, a Dorset councillor warned of a “perfect storm” from rising SEND transport spending. The council charged in 2022/23 a £825 contribution, plus a 50 per cent discount for those on benefits. 

Wokingham Borough Council followed suit, changing its policy to introduce the same charge as Dorset for the 2023/24 academic year.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “The level of support provided for students using public transport is for local authorities to decide and the arrangements do not necessarily have to include free or subsidised travel. Many local authorities do offer some form of subsidised transport, and this combined with the 16-19 bursary is intended to provide financial support to those students from low-income households.”

Ofsted will start recording when inspections are paused after admitting it could not back-up claims made under oath that inspectors had halted visits due to leader distress.

A coroner last month ruled an Ofsted inspection in November 2022 contributed to the death by suicide of headteacher Ruth Perry in January last year. The watchdog gave evidence at the inquest that it had previously paused inspections due to leader distress. 

Chris Russell, Ofsted’s then-national director for education, said while there was no written guidance on modifying inspections where heads were under “high levels of stress”, this was a “core value” of inspector training. 

But Ofsted has since admitted “we do not hold a central record of the number of inspections that have been paused, or the reasons why”. 

“We are therefore unable to supply accurate data on the number of inspections paused due to headteacher distress in each of the last three years,” former chief inspector Amanda Spielman added in a letter last month, seen by FE Week’s sister title Schools Week. 

However, she claimed: “We are aware from anecdotal evidence from our regional teams that inspections have been paused for various reasons, including headteacher distress.” 

Spielman was responding to a parliamentary question from Gareth Thomas, Labour MP for Harrow West. 

He told Schools Week: “I think it is symptomatic of the way Ofsted has run inspections recently that they did not bother to record when headteachers and other staff were distressed by the way inspections were being run.” 

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the “high-stakes nature of inspection can have a devasting impact on the wellbeing of school and college leaders and teachers”.  

“Not only has Ofsted failed to act upon this major issue, but it appears that it has barely been taken note of,” he added. “Major reform is required to produce an inspection system that is fairer and less punitive.” 

Ofsted chief inspector Sir Martyn Oliver has halted inspections while new mental health training is rolled out, but they are due to resume on January 22. He has also launched an inquiry into how Ofsted handled Perry’s death.  

Thomas added he hoped Oliver would “correct this as a matter of urgency. How else will we be able to tell if there really is a more effective, less brutal and more thoughtful inspection regime in place?”   

A spokesperson for the inspectorate told Schools Week this week: “We can confirm that we intend to record details of inspection pauses.” 

Schools Week understands the inspectorate is also working on plans to devise and publish a policy on when inspections are paused. This is likely to be included in the watchdog’s response to the coroner’s “regulation 28” report aimed at preventing future deaths. 

Ofsted said it will respond to the coroner next Friday. It is understood the response will include details of new actions and those already taken for each of the seven areas of concerns raised in the report. 

On pauses, the coroner’s report said there is “an almost complete absence of Ofsted training or published policy” in signs of distress during an inspection, practical steps to deal with this and pausing an inspection for this reason. 

During Perry’s inquest at Berkshire Coroners’ Court in November, senior coroner Heidi Connor said it was “suggested by Ofsted witnesses that it is an option to pause an ongoing inspection because of reasons of teacher distress”. 

However, she concluded it was “something of a mythical creature”, adding she heard “no direct evidence” and neither the school nor council were aware of the possibility. 

Ofsted pointed to Oliver’s previous comments when he halted inspections so the watchdog can fully respond to the coroner’s concerns. 

Rise in inspector conduct complaints

Ofsted provided data on complaints relating to inspector conduct. 

In the 2020–2021 financial year, 39 complaints from 2,585 inspections related to concerns over the conduct of inspections (1.5 per cent). The number of inspections this year was lower than normal amid Covid-19. 

In the 2022–2023 financial year, Ofsted received 171 complaints raising conduct concerns out of a total of 7,615 inspections (2.24 per cent). 

Gareth Thomas, Labour MP for Harrow West, said he was “very concerned by reports of aggressive and overzealous inspectors”. 

Just 125 students out of an expected 2,400 enrolled onto the government’s higher education short course trial – raising questions about demand for the flagship lifelong learning entitlement.

The “shocking” figures were revealed today by HE regulator the Office for Students as it published an independent evaluation report for the £2 million pilot.

Delivery of the scheme began in 2022/23 with 21 universities and one college – Weston College – handed a slice of the funding to develop 96 higher education courses shorter than traditional degrees at levels 4 to 6.

But just 17 of those courses at 10 providers were actually launched with student intakes, with a total of 125 enrolments – a “long way short of the more than 2,400 enrolments anticipated in project proposals”, as stated by the evaluation report.

The report said a “distinct aim” of the programme was to test a new student finance product, which provided funding for tuition fees up to a level of £2,310 for a 30 credit course and £3,080 for a 40 credit course.

But data shared by providers suggested half of all enrolled students – 62 – funded their participation individually, with the remainder attending on a free-of-charge basis arranged with their employer. Of those who did pay course fees, just 41 obtained the new student loan.

The low take up meant the trial was not a “robust test” of the new student loan scheme.

‘Systematic framework for credit transfer’ concern

The 22 providers of the scheme were announced in December 2021, meaning they had around eight months to develop and market the courses ahead of enrolments in August 2022.

Evaluators said that due to delays with validation and other processes to support provision – such as handling admissions, which had to incorporate eligibility requirements bespoke to a short course – the time available to promote and market courses intended “became very short or even non-existent”.

The report said many providers were also “unclear about the best target market for their provision, which programme guidance suggested should be targeted to adults outside the mainstream HE market but also closely aligned with employers’ needs to upskill their workforces”.

Those two markets required “entirely different promotional strategies, and several projects that started promotions to both markets subsequently narrowed their strategy to only the employer market”.

Evaluators also found a “serious weakness” of the scheme was that providers could not guarantee the future value of credits gained from a course and whether they would be recognised by another provider or accumulated towards a degree.

The report also found that learners required a greater level of flexibility than was offered – particularly as many of the students were working full-time alongside their studies.

Will the LLE ever get off the ground properly?

The short course trial was launched as a step towards the government’s lifelong learning entitlement. Set to be rolled out from 2025, the entitlement will provide individuals with the equivalent of four years of tuition loans – worth up to £37,000 in today’s fees – to use flexibly over their lifetime.

Experts are now questioning whether the LLE can be rolled out successfully.

Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI), described the short course trial figures as “shockingly low”. 

He added: “Indeed, some people have even started to question whether the LLE will ever get off the ground properly or whether it will instead get lost in the chaos of this election year.

“For one thing, the Treasury will be reluctant to fund a policy initiative that is yet to look like it is delivering value for money. But lifelong learning is critically important and so my hope is that people will work now hard to learn the hard lessons from the trial – after all that is the point of trials.”

Rose Stephenson, HEPI’s director of policy, said the report’s warning of a “lack of a systematic framework for credit transfer” will be the case for the LLE, unless a sector-wide credit transfer mechanism is in place, tested, and functional ahead of the roll-out. 

“With the first set of courses due to launch next year, this feels wildly unobtainable”, Stephenson added.

“Increasing the flexibility on offer, by including modules of less than 30 credits, and funding support for distance learning are two steps needed for the LLE to be successful. Given the tiny figures engaged in this trail, policy makers need to think carefully about whether the LLE is feasible in is current form.”

An OfS blog about the the short course trial evaluation said: “While it is disappointing that enrolments were lower than expected, it is important to emphasise the novel nature of this work and that universities and colleges worked swiftly to develop innovative new courses at speed and with limited resources.

“The evaluation provides a range of recommendations for the OfS, which we will carefully consider in how we run future funding calls of this kind.”  

A DfE spokesperson said: “Students who enrolled on these courses reported positive experiences and there was strong engagement from employers throughout the process. 

“We have taken lessons from the HESC trial forward, for example through the Modular Acceleration Programme, where successful providers will be awarded specific funding for demand rising activities to support the roll-out of their modular courses.”