Investing in education for children with complex disabilities - what Sense would like to see from this week’s Comprehensive Spending Review.

This Wednesday, Chancellor Rishi Sunak will reveal the Government’s latest Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) which will outline spending plans over the next 3 years across Government departments.

One of the Chancellor’s stated key aims of the CSR is to make people's lives better across the country by investing in public services. This is something we welcome and it is undoubtable that additional funding is needed in the adult social care sector for example, in order to improve the availability and quality of support for people with complex disabilities.

However, there have also been some rumours of increased funding for children with special educational needs and disabilities within the CSR as well, which are promising to hear about. We feel that the CSR is a key opportunity to increase the support available for children and young people with complex disabilities. In particular we would like to see increased investment in specialist educational support for children and young people with multi-sensory impairment (MSI). Many children have missed out on their education over the pandemic, and this is even more true for children with both sight and hearing loss who need additional support to be able to achieve their potential.

Department for Education figures suggest that there are currently 3,829 children with MSI in England (Department for Education (2021) Special Educational Needs in England), although other research suggests that this may be an underestimate (Robertson and Emerson (2010) Estimating the Number of People with Co‐Occurring Vision and Hearing Impairments in the UK). Children with MSI can receive support from a range of professionals to support their health and educational needs, one of whom is MSI teachers who provide educational support by tailoring a child’s learning to ensure that their needs are met. They usually work by supporting multiple children across different ages and schools by providing additional specialist input in addition to other teaching professionals.

Despite the vital role these teachers play and the number of children with MSI across England, evidence gathered by Sense suggests that not enough children are getting access to the support they need. Responses to recent Freedom of Information requests revealed that over half (52%) of Local Authorities across England do not employ any MSI teachers.

In order to address the gap in MSI teachers we estimate that an investment of £34.3 million is required: 

•  £4.8 million to train and employ 21 MSI teachers in Local Authorities where there is an urgent need
•  £13.3 million to fill the remaining gaps in provision, by training and employing 58 MSI teachers in Local Authorities where there is no current provision, but a less urgent need
• £16.2 million to keep 73 MSI teachers in post across England

This funding will be vital for building back specialist support for children with MSI, enabling them to reach their potential. We will be closely monitoring the announcements that the Government make and ensuring that they hear about the support children with MSI need.

As well as following the CSR announcement closely, we’ll be talking to Government over the coming months about what they do to support people with complex disabilities with their education and in other areas of their lives.

We hope that in their future planning the Chancellor and the Government take the opportunity to do what they can to support children with MSI to get the specialist support they need to have the best start in life.

For more information about Sense’s policy and public affairs work, please visit www.sense.org.uk/campaigns and follow @SensePolicy on Twitter.