FURIOUS councillors have demanded that proposals to slash funding for children with special needs be halted – and put through a scrutiny process before any decisions are made.

Dorset County Council is due to contact schools today to let them know whether the plans to lower the mainstream top-up funding and remove the tipping point scheme for schools will go ahead.

The Dorset Schools Forum says the moves will help plug a £5.2m hole in the High Needs Block funding – but headteachers, governors and parents have blasted the plans, saying they will harm the most vulnerable pupils and force schools into debt.

But, county councillors from across Weymouth, Portland and West Dorset are calling for that decision to be postponed.

Cllr Kate Wheller, who is the county council’s member champion for children, young people and adults with disabilities, called the plans ‘short-sighted’.

She added: “In Weymouth and Portland we have areas of considerable deprivation and high needs. This needs to be properly scrutinised.”

Cllr Paul Kimber agreed. He said: “I do not believe we should be playing politics with our most vulnerable, our most needy children, regarding education. It’s too important.”

And Cllr Mark Tewkesbury said: “It definitely needs to go back through a scrutiny process to make sure the right decisions are being made.”

Cllr Ros Kayes said the plans have been through ‘minimal consultation’ with schools and have not been discussed by any Dorset County Council committee. The Dorset Schools Forum is made up headteachers, governors and non-school members, and oversees the budget set by central government. 

A report to the forum in January described how there are more pupils in the system than the budget can support at the levels paid by government – meaning cuts are the only way forward.

Cllr Kayes said: “The cuts, which start on April 1, have been made without proper scrutiny. I call on DCC to suspend any decision on implementing these measures until they have been fully scrutinised by elected members.”

Letters from school headteachers and governors which were published in the minutes of a Dorset Schools Forum meeting showed the strength of feeling over the issue.

The Reverend Pete Stone, a vicar and governor at St Mary’s CE Primary School, also contacted the Dorset Echo to speak out.

He said St Mary’s, which specialises in children with high needs, is at risk of losing £83,000 – a tenth of their budget – through the cuts, if they go ahead. He added that it would mean the loss of 11 teaching assistants.

The Minerva Learning Trust, which includes St Mary’s, said the redundancies are ‘very much a worst case scenario’ and that their budget has not been finalised.

The Revd Stone said: “I understand the need for austerity and savings, but my concern is that these ‘savings’ are being made at the expense of vulnerable children, who through no fault of their own will have the support networks at school taken from them because of these cuts.”

Schools set for more funding cuts

SCHOOLS are being starved of funding, a union claims – as it is revealed that cuts of more than £17m are set to hit Dorset.

Data published by the NUT reveals that schools in Dorset will be £17,886,900 worse off by 2019/20 than they were in 2015/16.

The union also claimed that, after 2020, 12 out of 160 schools in Dorset will face further cuts of £205,244.

The website www.schoolcuts.org.uk is published by the NUT and other teaching unions and compares each schools funding in 2015/16 compared with what the Government predicts it will receive under its proposed new National Funding Formula (NFF). This is then adjusted for inflation and cost increases.

Figures published on the website reveal that Beaminster School will lose £567 per pupil between 2015/16 and 2019/20 – a total cut of £325,946. IPACA will lose £867 per pupil over this period, a total loss of £920,247.

Among the primary schools, Lulworth and Winfrith Church of England Primary School is one of the most affected, facing a total cut of £130,821, or £1,200 per pupil.

NUT Secretary Ali Chown said: “The Government are breaking their promise to protect school budgets. Parents in Dorset should be deeply concerned by these damaging cuts that hit almost every school. The Government must act now to protect schools.”