Existing Parents and Carers

Many thanks for the words of support and your recognition that these proposals have been forced upon us. Apologies for any emails that have been left unanswered, it is purely as a result of the number we are receiving.

You will all have had the letter outlining the current situation and the proposals, and we hope that Monday's meeting will give you a fuller picture of that and of how you can submit your thoughts to the restructuring committee. We will post information here for those who cannot attend.

In the meantime, we post below some links you may find useful:

1. For further information about the school funding situation nationally, and the funding of provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), we suggest the following publications:
   • ‘Financial sustainability of schools’, National Audit Office, December 2016; https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Financial-sustainability-of-schools.pdf
   • ‘School funding pressures in England’, Education Policy Institute, March 2018; https://epi.org.uk/publications-and-research/school-funding-pressures/
   • Empty promises - the crisis in supporting children with SEND’, National Association of Head Teachers, September 2018; https://www.naht.org.uk/news-and-opinion/news/funding-news/empty-promises-the-crisis-in-supporting-children-with-send/
   • H Pidd and R Adams, 'School in Stockport to close early on Fridays for lack of funding', in 'The Guardian, 28 February 2019; https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/feb/28/school-stockport-close-early-fridays-lack-funding
2. To understand how our school’s income and spending compares to other schools, you can explore the data on the government’s ‘Schools Financial Benchmarking’ website - https://schools-financial-benchmarking.service.gov.uk/
   The data shows that KHPS receives and spends less per pupil than other local schools. In particular, we already spend less on staff per pupil than almost all of these schools, despite the fact that our Complex Needs provision requires a lot of extra staffing. We also spend the least on things like classroom resources and staff training. We are in no way suggesting that these other schools are ‘over-funded’ – all schools are experiencing unacceptable financial pressures – our aim is to draw attention to the comparative receipt of and use of funding in our school.