00:00Sebby what is it? Sebby listening?
00:05Can you hear it?
00:07A profoundly different way of teaching for children with some of the most profound needs in the South East.
00:17No day is easy for the specialist staff here at Five Acre Wood in Maidstone
00:21who now fear job losses after a lower than expected uplift in funding from Kent County Council.
00:28It's not sustainable and as I've said previously the last thing I want is to make redundancies
00:36because our staff are the best resource that our young people could have
00:43and the last thing I want you to do is make redundancies.
00:47And the impression I'm getting is that you're not confident that the money is there from the local authority at
00:54this stage?
00:54No, no. And I have colleagues who have had to make redundancies and it's not a good place to be
01:01in.
01:01Special educational needs schools here in Kent will receive a 1% uplift in per pupil funding.
01:07But this is lower than some mainstream schools and won't apply to the majority of staffing costs
01:15which make up more than 85% of Five Acre Wood's budget.
01:20If those cuts were to happen I think it would be a massive detriment to staff and pupils.
01:27I think we definitely wouldn't feel like we would be able to give the provision that the children deserve and
01:33need.
01:34But Kent County Council say their hands have been tied by Whitehall who give the local authority their schools funding.
01:42With the higher needs budget that is sent to us and we were given zero uplift.
01:47So that is why we made a decision to at least give some uplift rather than nothing.
01:54We didn't expect not to get an uplift from the government so therefore we're all in a situation
02:00where as a sector together we need to manage that budget best we can because there is no more. That
02:07is the pot.
02:08Now the Department for Education do say they are reforming a brokered SEND system to give young people the best
02:17start in life.
02:18But after looking through dozens of council documents, government spreadsheets after government spreadsheet,
02:25having spoken to senior press officers in Whitehall and Kent County Council,
02:31I'm no closer to understanding why the UK's largest SEND school has a more than £600,000 gap in their
02:42budget for this year.
02:44The only thing that's certain in fact is that staff are now at risk of losing their jobs
02:49and this could have a huge knock-on effect for vulnerable young people in Kent and beyond.
02:57ONLY LEADER IN MAILSTONE
02:59ONLY LEADER IN MAILSTONE
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