Special needs transport spending hits record high in England
https://www.ft.com/content/6a157006-bb80-41b4-a550-0a7e42e7b48f
Posted by 457655676
Special needs transport spending hits record high in England
https://www.ft.com/content/6a157006-bb80-41b4-a550-0a7e42e7b48f
Posted by 457655676
18 Comments
To be clear, current spending year 23/24 is 1.73 billion on getting disabled children to school.
Whilst this is a significant increase, from a meager 645 million pounds in fiscal year 2016/2017, and the system is showing signs of strain, it is actually to be expected.
To put this into perspective, that 1.73 billion is tuppance compared to some absolute ridiculous nonsense the UK taxpayer is currently paying out on.
Hs2 (a road) is costing us 70 billion pounds.
Chagos islands deal (to house American rockets) – costing us 35 billion pounds.
Even the asylum hotels that the Daily Mail go on about all day costs more than this at around 2 billion a year.
Why are we hiring companies to do this? Must be cheaper to do it inhouse.
[removed]
How else are they meant to wave flags outside hotels at the other side of the country?
One factor that people never like to discuss is that we’ve got a lot better at keeping babies alive – especially extremely premature babies.
Whereas once they would have died as neonates, now they survive but often with very significant physical or cognitive disabilities that necessitate a special school. We have kids that are in wheelchairs, on portable ventilators with little hope of ever coming off ventilation, let alone living a relatively normal life. Often they will need 24/7 lifetime care.
While saving babies is something the parents desperately want, we cannot pretend that this is a cost free course of action.
There’s a lot of chat about mild autism diagnosed a lot more, and not a lot about kids who wouldn’t have survived 10 or 20 years earlier.
Oh goody this again
I was one of those kids (I’m autistic and dyspraxic) and this was an era where going to mainstream school was not thought of as possible for a kid like me, but I went anyway.
We moved, tried to get into local mainstream primary, no room. Where is there room? Where I went before.
School was 3 miles away. Taxi picked a bunch of us up, we all went to the same school apart from one kid.
So there was me, a girl with cerebral palsy who was walking with a stick at primary school (last time I saw her she was using an electric wheelchair), a girl who had a tracheotomy at about age 7 and I can’t remember much about the other two.
So when I was aged in single figures my daily trip to school was measured in hours, such fun
Why are their parents unable to transport them to school themselves, the way other parents do…? Or public transport? A school bus?
Three cars parked on the drive and the taxpayer picks up the bill to take kids to school.
For anything to remain the same in real terms, it should be at a record high for spending currently just because of inflation. We should be more outraged by any community services that currently aren’t at record highs.
I have a sibling who has a pretty severe disability – they got transported to and from school and now as an adult get lots of hours of care paid for by the council.
I’ve spent lots of time in special needs schools and at adult social care centres. Some of the people require two carers with them at all times when they’re at school/clubs. This care is incredibly expensive.
As a society we absolutely need to protect the most vulnerable but there is no natural law that the support needed will always be possible to deliver. I really hope that social care (including transport to school) for people with disabilities doesn’t become a political football but I fear that is where we are going
No surprises there, government limos cost a fortune.
Here’s a paywall-free version: https://archive.ph/90VnR
It turns out the primary thrust of the article is arguing that large efficiencies could be made without harming children by reallocating student places to minimise travel distance and by avoiding local authorities making piecemeal deals. Key drivers of increasing costs are rising costs in the transport market and a shortage of local schools.
A special school up the road from me has about 30 taxis are parked up there waiting for the end of the day.
I chatted with one of them and he told me he gets £55 each trip.
So that’s £550 a week.
For maybe 2 hours work.
It’s a good gig to be honest.
Though you need a special car and some kind of safeguarding certificate.
This is a private special school though so now idea who is paying that 55 a trip.
I would have thought busses would be more affordable but obviously route planning and what not.
They have entirely created this situation by closing or demoting special needs schools.
Now SEND kids can be at many different schools so individual transport will cost more.
Back in the day when there were a lot of special schools, coaches were used to transport a bunch of kids at once.
Yes.. you should expect this and a lot more, because it is logical to assume that MORE money needs to be put into welfare and the social security net given the harsher economic conditions and more selective and more unkind world we progressively live in, driven by increasingly inequal economics.
There are so many things that make it more difficult for families these days than before.
If you don’t understand that, then you don’t understand anything.
My son has transport provided. He gets a bus that has attendants and goes with other children from the area. He has to travel far to school because of his needs. I am really grateful that this is available and the consistency has such a positive impact on his life. Living with a SEND child can be very challenging, these sorts of things help enormously.
Of course, I see the taxis etc at school and wonder if there are more cost effective methods but I assume those children travel even further and/or live very rurally. It does cost a lot, but it’s a lifeline for a lot of folks.
They closed half the smaller special schools in favour of bigger ones in the middle of a bunch of areas so this was inevitable
I would say a good reason for this is that over the last 15-20years huge numbers of people have moved around for work or for houses in a way we’ve never done before. Although the numbers are insane, 2024 Kent had to pay for 20% of its student population. Something isn’t right there, I can’t help but worry 20years from now we’re going to be dealing with the results of whatever this over prescription thing is doing to kids.