General debate on education and opportunity, House of Commons, 24 July 2024

• Local government as innovators, providers, conveners of services and place leaders, hold the key to solving some of our biggest national challenges and will be critical to achieving the Government’s five missions. A new parliament presents a great opportunity to reset the relationship between central and local government and to deliver transformative change for all in our communities. 
• We welcome the Government’s proposed cross-cutting approach to improving communities' wellbeing, prosperity, and opportunities – encompassing education, housing, health and social care, welfare and employment. Ensuring people get the right support at the right time will be vital to improving outcomes, life chances and has significant socio-economic benefits. The estimated cost of late intervention for children and young people alone is £17 billion a year. We want to work with the Government to deliver a fundamental shift towards prevention across all services and policymaking, that reinvests in vital community services and rolls out evidence-based interventions at pace.  
• We welcome the Government’s Children’s Wellbeing Bill which introduces vital reforms to the education system that the LGA and councils have long been calling for. Despite having an important role and statutory duties in local education systems, for too long, councils have not had the necessary powers to fulfil their role or improve support for children and young people. We want to work with the Government to ensure the proposed reforms redress the historic discrepancy between councils' duties and powers, laying the foundation for a stronger education system that supports all learners. 
• We support the Government’s proposals to require all schools to cooperate with local authorities on SEND inclusion and take a community-wide approach to SEND by improving capacity within mainstream and special schools. However, to truly transform outcomes for children and young people with additional needs, nothing short of fundamental reform is urgently needed. This will include reform of the statutory framework to give local leaders the right powers to improve SEND systems. We want to work with Government a pace to deliver our vision for an effective and sustainable SEND system. 
• To break down barriers to opportunities for all, we urgently need a coherent, locally led employment and skills offer attuned to the challenges and opportunities of people and place. The LGA’s Work Local proposals offer a blueprint to achieve this vision. We want to work with Government to ensure all areas have the capacity, funding and powers to create a skills and employment system fit for the future.

The Children’s Wellbeing Bill

Councils welcome the Children’s Wellbeing Bill announced in the King’s Speech. The Bill proposes to introduce vital reforms to the education system that the LGA and councils have long been calling for. Despite having an important role and statutory duties in local education systems, for too long, councils have not had the requisite powers to fulfil their role or improve support for children and young people. The proposed reforms will redress the historic discrepancy between councils' duties and powers, laying the foundation for improving outcomes for all children and young people.

We particularly support the measures proposed in the Bill to: 

• create a duty on local authorities to have and maintain Children Not in School registers and provide support to home-educating parents.
• requiring all schools to cooperate with the local authority on school admissions, SEND inclusion, and place planning.
• providing Ofsted stronger powers to investigate the offence of operating an unregistered independent school.

School admissions and place planning

Councils have a duty to plan local school places and secure a place for every child that needs one. However, they currently do not have the same power to direct academy trusts to expand their number of school places or admit individual pupils as they do with council-maintained schools. 81.9 per cent of all secondary schools are now academies or free schools. Local authorities therefore have limited powers to meet their duties and secure suitable school places for children who are out of school if local academies refuse to take them. This is a particular issue for children with SEND and pupils who have been permanently excluded, meaning vulnerable children are currently out of school and missing education for longer than necessary. 

We therefore want to work with the Government to ensure the Children’s Wellbeing Bill gives councils a backstop power to direct academies to admit individual pupils and expand school places. This will be vital to get vulnerable children back into school as quickly as possible and meet local needs for school places.

Register of children not in school

Councils have a duty to ensure that all children of compulsory age receive a suitable education. Yet councils currently have little information about children who are not enrolled in a mainstream school. We have long called for councils to have the power to maintain a register of children not in school. The register, alongside the introduction of a unique identifying number for every child, will help to improve the visibility of children and prevent vulnerable children from disappearing from the view of services designed to keep them safe. 

We have long warned that, without seeing children who are out of school, councils cannot possibly verify whether a child is receiving a suitable education in a safe environment or the information parents provide for the register is correct. Within the Bill, councils therefore also need a power to meet with these children at appropriate intervals. This will be vital to strengthen the safeguarding of children and allow councils to identify where children and families would benefit from support. 

Inclusion and SEND

Despite record investment, the SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) system continues to fail too many children and families, and rising costs are becoming an existential threat to the financial sustainability of councils. 

Developments over the last decade have significantly reduced the ability of the mainstream education system to support children with additional needs. Education reforms have disincentivized inclusion, while cuts to support within schools and wider services have reduced the targeted support that is available outside of the statutory system. As a result, Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) are increasingly seen as the only avenue to access additional support. 

We support the Government’s proposals to require all schools to cooperate with local authorities on SEND inclusion.  However, to truly transform outcomes for children and young people with additional needs, nothing short of fundamental reform is urgently needed. 

The LGA will shortly be publishing a report which sets out a bold vision to tackle current challenges and create a sustainable and effective SEND system. We want to work collectively with Government, parent carers and other partners to take these proposals for SEND reform forward and transform lives. 

Councils are unanimous that reforms are urgently needed to:

Put inclusion at the heart of every aspect of our education system. This will require:

• A new national ambition for inclusion, with a national framework to set out what support should be provided in mainstream settings and best practice, to drive up standards
• rapidly rebuilding capacity within mainstream settings so that more children can access the support they need, at the right time, without the need for statutory assessment or plan.
• wholesale reform of education policy, including curriculum, qualifications, accountability, workforce training and development, leadership, and buildings.

Reform the statutory SEND system. Councils have long been highlighting that there is a fundamental misalignment of roles, responsibilities and accountabilities, which mean local SEND system leaders do not have the powers or strategic oversight they need to respond to issues or improve support. While SEND services are a multi-agency responsibility, local authorities have no clear mechanism for holding health partners to account for their vital contribution. Yet, councils are held accountable for outcomes not totally within their control.

We welcome the Government’s focus on early education and childcare. Accessible, affordable early years provision is vital to tackling disadvantage, closing the attainment gap, and supporting parents into work.

Councils have a key strategic role in ensuring the availability of good, high-quality early education and childcare in their areas. It’s therefore crucial that councils have the resources, powers and levers to effectively develop and shape the market, support high-quality provision and ensure that parents get the childcare that works for them. Key to this will be investing in developing a skilled workforce and ensuring early years entitlements are sufficiently funded.

Too many young people leave school without the qualifications they need and too many adults are locked out from getting the support they need to retrain, upskill and access quality work. 

As the Government recognises, change is needed and we welcome their commitment to devolve the adult education budget to all areas, giving local leaders more power to shape a joined-up work, health, and skills offer. 

The LGA’s Work Local proposals provide a blueprint and practical steps for the Government to deliver its vision and create an ambitious, integrated skills and employment offer in every area. A strong partnership between national and local government is needed to turn these proposals into reality. We propose establishing three interlinked offers to better support adults and young people.  Each offer would be guided by nationally set standards, but planned and commissioned by local government. 

• Skills for All – A locally delivered all-age careers advice service tailored to local needs, working closely with schools, employers and training providers. Skills for all would also enable councils to improve lifelong learning for all adults and better match skills supply with demand, by creating a universal offer of level 2 functional skills in every area and give all adults the opportunity access to employer-led technical skills provision, aligned to priority sectors. 
• Youth Pathways – A locally delivered, dedicated youth employability service for young people through from 16 to 24 who are NEET or at risk of becoming NEET, to provide wrap-around support and connect them with jobs, learning/ training, and brings in expertise of a range of partners. 
• Working Futures – A dedicated, integrated wrap-around service for all people who need extra help to find and progress in work, open to everyone and not just those in receipt of Universal Credit. The service would be directly delivered/ commissioned by local government, working closely with a wide range of partners including DWP and jobcentres, health services, skills partners to provide people with intensive, wrap-around support – bringing in mental health, housing and wider support – and turn lives around. 

For residents, these proposals will pave the way for an improved and accessible skills and employment service, with intensive support for those who need it, and greater access to lifelong learning for all. For employers and the local economy, they will provide a ‘single front door’ with access to a range of services, with skills more attuned to the local economy.

The foundations for these three offers are already in place in many areas. We now want to work with Government to ensure that all areas have the capacity, funding and powers to create a skills and employment system fit for the future, as soon as possible.

The planned removal of the VAT exemption on private schools could result in some pupils moving from the private sector to the state sector. We want to work with the Government to understand the impact of this change and ensure councils have sufficient time to plan, and in some cases expand, appropriate school places for children that need them. Councils sometimes place children with additional needs in independent schools, if this best fits their needs. It is therefore understandable that the Government has committed to continue the VAT exemption on independent school places for children with Education, Health and Care Plans, to prevent councils from paying increased costs.