Overcrowded specialist schools: ‘We’re teaching in cupboards’

Half of England’s state-funded schools for children with special educational needs and disabilities are overbooked, according to a BBC study.

Schools have converted portable cubicles and even closets into classrooms due to lack of space. Principals say this puts pressure on staff and unsettles students.

Parents say waiting for places means their children lack education.

The Department for Education says it is spending £2.6billion on new places.

Sarah is in her son Cohen’s classroom – not to pick him up, but to collect his things a year after he stopped attending school.

Maltby Hilltop School, Rotherham is a specialist school for pupils aged 2 to 19 with severe learning disabilities and complex needs. Due to a lack of space and overcrowding in the main building, Cohen’s classroom is in a portable cubicle with noisy floors and thin walls.

The 14-year-old is autistic and suffers from pathological demand avoidance (PDA), which leads to a rigid need for control when he is afraid.

Cohen struggles with his condition when he’s not in a calm environment – and Sarah. whose full names we don’t use says the school just didn’t have enough space to provide this.

“He would have panic attacks and hyperventilate,” she says.

“He wants to be here, but the space doesn’t allow it.”

Sarah is trying to get Cohen into another technical school but says there are no spots available until September.

The lack of places in special education schools is a problem across the UK, with an unprecedented demand for support.

Advances in life expectancy, greater awareness and better diagnoses mean there are now more children and young people with needs that are difficult to meet in mainstream schools. The pandemic has contributed to a system that is already under strain.

In the past five years, the number of children and young people being educated in specialized schools and colleges in England has increased by almost a third – to 142,028 last year.

send help

Special education schools across the UK are under pressure due to a lack of places. Families invite the BBC’s Elaine Dunkley to take a look at the challenges they face as they compete for a place in school.

Available now on BBC iPlayer(UK only)

Cohen is one of three students who are unable to attend class at Maltby Hilltop due to overcrowding and noise.

He is currently at home and spends most of his time alone in his bedroom. Sarah says he’s “keeping busy” and “missing out on life skills” while waiting for a suitable school place.

As she flips through the colorful drawings, workbooks and pens in her son’s school drawer, she adds, “He should be studying, and he should be with his friends.”

BBC News compared student enrollment data to the number of places allocated at 1,012 state-funded schools for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) in England in the 2021-22 school year.

We found that just over half (52%) of SEND schools had more children in their classes than the number of spots assigned.

When Headmaster Rob Mulvey joined Maltby Hilltop in 2011, there were 82 children enrolled. By 2019 there were 99 students. This year there are 134.

Wheelchairs, walkers, and medical equipment line the hallways. There is no longer a dining room – children eat in their classrooms because the space is instead used for large trampolines to provide therapeutic exercise for children with various disabilities and additional needs.

A cupboard that used to house stationery is now used as a therapy room for visually impaired students. It can only accommodate two students at a time, and there are no windows or natural light.

Mr Mulvey says the fact that children have to study in a closet rather than a proper classroom is “absolutely tragic” and “morally wrong”.

“As a school leader I find it really shameful that we offer this to our children. You deserve so much better.”

Local authorities allocate places in consultation with technical schools to assess how many children they can attend, but local authorities can and do ask schools to take more students.

A school must accept a student if that school is specifically listed in its Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP), a legal document that describes the support a child needs. While councils can reject applications, this is often contested by parents, who usually win in costly courts.

Nationwide, the number of students with EHCPs has increased by 50% since 2016 to just over 355,500 last year.

Maltby Hilltop was built in the 1970s and its modular concrete slab structure makes it difficult to build tall. The location on a hill also makes the construction work prohibitively expensive. Mr Mulvey says the school is busy.

“We’ve thought about every inch of the school and what we can do to make it better, and that’s all we can do,” he says.

“The demand for places is increasing. There are some desperate families out there who really need a place at this school, but we can’t offer it.”

Funding for technical schools comes from the high-need funds made available to councils. Funding per student in technical schools starts at £10,000 per child and is scaled up as needed.

If a school accepts more students than it has been assigned, it does not necessarily receive the full funding for each additional child – the municipality decides that.

Despite an additional £400m in much-needed funding announced in the autumn statement, the Local Government Association (LGA) says councils are facing “significant financial challenges” and need long-term certainty about funding to support children with SEND .

Louise Gittins, a local councilor and chair of the LGA’s Children and Youth Committee, has told the BBC that councils will face a £3.6bn deficit on SEND spending by 2025 if no action is taken.

She also called on the government to urgently release its long-awaited proposals “for a reformed system that better meets the needs of children with SEND.”

In response to the BBC’s findings, the Department for Education said it was providing £2.6 billion in capital up to 2025 to help provide new places in SEND schools. It added that it had increased funding for high needs by 50% since 2019 to over £10bn by next year.

Principal Mr Mulvey says technical schools need more investment from both government and local authorities.

“We don’t need band-aids. We need a long-term solution to increase the number of places and options for children with additional needs.”

Additional data research by Wesley Stephenson.

Are you affected by issues covered in this story? Share your experiences via email haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk.

Please provide a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also get in touch with us in the following ways:

If you are reading this page and cannot see the form, you must visit the mobile version of the BBC website to submit your question or comment, or you can email us at HaveYourSay@bbc.co.uk. Please include your name, age and place of residence with each submission.