A FORUM of local school bosses has expressed its disappointment at the "non-committal" Government response to their special needs funding concerns.

Earlier this year members of the Bradford Schools Forum accused the government of failing to provide the district with enough funding for the high number of pupils with Special Educational Needs.

Out of a nationwide funding pot of £365 million to boost local SEND provisions, Bradford was allocated just £1.117m - 0.318 per cent of the total pot.

Members of the Schools Forum pointed out that in recent years the district has desperately needed new SEND places, but has had to divert money away from mainstream schools to create these places.

Before the Summer break the Forum wrote to Lord Agnew, Under Secretary of State for the School System to raise their "significant concern" over the funding and asking for an explanation of how the figure for Bradford was reached.

Lord Agnew replied: "The formula for these allocations was based principally on projected population growth for children and young people aged 2-18 between the years of 2017/18 and 2020/21.

"IN this data set Bradford was forecast demographic growth of 1,301."

School bosses express 'significant concern' over government funding for special needs places in Bradford

He goes on to say this figure determined the allocation to Bradford, and that funding would be looked at again in the next spending review.

The response was discussed at the latest meeting of the Schools Forum yesterday morning.

Andrew Redding, Schools Finance Officer, said: "It is a bland, fairly non committal response.

"There is a general commitment that the high needs block will be looked at moving forwards.

"We think they are using the wrong data set that doesn't recognise where the growth in SEND is in Bradford.

"It looks at the 2-18 range. At the bottom end of that there has been a drop in birth rates, and at the top end there is also a lower amount of young people.

"There is a pressure in the middle due to the significant number of children with SEND needs going into the secondary school phase.

"It appears that the government is not willing to look at this issue again until the next spending settlement, which is somewhat disappointing."

Councillor Mike Pollard (Con: Baildon) attended yesterday's meeting, and told the Telegraph & Argus afterwards: “In establishing Bradford’s share of this additional capital funding for SEND, I concede that Government may arguably have used a fairly basic dataset, which wasn’t very useful in establishing a fair picture of the District’s additional need.

"However, the clear shortcomings that have been made clear in reports presented to Children’s Services Overview & Scrutiny Committee, with regard to the Authority’s compliance in respect of the timeliness of assessments for establishment of EHCPs (Education Health and Care Assessments and Plans) will have doubtless resulted in less than accurate ‘baselines’ of need being made clear to Whitehall bean counters.

"It may well be a case of bad data in, bad result out.”