STOP Safety Valve. SUPPORT our children. SUPPORT our schools.
What’s happening?
Safety Valve is a controversial Government schools project, which
forces councils to make drastic cuts in support for children with
special educational needs & disabilities (SEND). BCP Council
has been selected as a 2024 entrant, and is expected to sign a
binding contract in March. The best chance to stop this is to raise
public awareness and demand a council vote.
What would this mean for SEND children and families?
SEND support is NOT a golden ticket or a free pass. It just offers
a child a chance to better access education and improve their
lives.
But the objective of Safety Valve is to reduce the amount spent on
SEND, by cutting the support delivered to children. For BCP this
includes slashing new plans by 50%, pushing up to 90% of new plans
into mainstream schools, and making further cuts to support for
children aged 16+.
What about the effect on schools?
The BCP proposal could mean taking money from schools.
Considerations include cutting 11% from the main schools budget,
and raiding the reserves of well-run schools. This would have a
terrible domino effect, and would push many schools closer to
insolvency.
Is this legal?
All councils are obliged by law to deliver statutory SEND services.
Almost all councils are struggling to uphold this duty already.
Nationally, councils lose 98% of all SEND tribunal cases.
But Safety Valve doesn’t change the law. In fact, it would
make BCP more exposed to legal challenges than ever before.
Why is this even happening?
The Government has been under-funding SEND services for years, and
a deficit has been growing in all councils. It’s now so big
that it could push many councils into insolvency by 2026.
But rather than increase funding, or make schools policy more
inclusive, the Government is using Safety Valve to force councils
to slash support for some of our most vulnerable children. This
could affect thousands of struggling BCP families.
Ironically, Safety Valve won’t even solve the financial
issues. The deficit is too big. There are other solutions, but
nothing can happen until after the election. For now, we need to
hang on.
What can we do about it?
Sign this petition! By doing so, we together demand that BCP
leaders agree to hold a Full Council debate and vote on Safety
Valve. And if the Council votes to reject it, that decision must be
binding.
STOP Safety Valve. SUPPORT our children. SUPPORT our
schools.
This ePetition ran from 08/01/2024 to 13/02/2024 and has now finished.
2441 people signed this ePetition.