Teacher claims Bucks Council is missing its special education plan deadlines

Julie Manning of Henry Allen Nursery School in Amersham said lengthy delays to making the plans for pupils with special educational needs or disabilities meant a lack of funding for the school to support them.

Speaking during Tuesday’s meeting of the schools forum at Buckinghamshire Council, she said: “We have got a year-long wait for the EHCPs. We have nothing in place at all to fund that child.”

Parents and schools can request an EHCP, a legal document, if a child needs more support in their education than would otherwise be available to them at school.

Once the request is made, if a local authority will make an EHCP, it has a statutory 20-week timeline to issue the plan.

Bucks Council’s service director for education, Michael Jarrett, told the meeting the authority was introducing ‘exceptional needs funding’, which would help schools waiting for the outcome of EHCP assessments.

He added: “Unfortunately, we are not always – for a variety of reasons, mostly due to capacity – able to meet that statutory timeframe. So, we need to have something in place.”

Mrs Manning, a co-headteacher at the nursery school for two to four-year-olds, said it was ‘crucial’ the school received funding.

She said: “We have got 25 children across the state-maintained nursery schools that are in that EHCP process, and we have got to wait a year. They will be in reception before we get any funding.”