Management Information Sheet
SEND & AP Transformation Programme
Norfolk County Council has an ambitious strategy to transform education for children with special educational needs and disabilities, investing in new specialist school places and strengthening support to mainstream schools. At its heart, is a focus on early help and inclusion.
The vision is for Norfolk is to be a county where all children and young people with Special Education Needs and Disabilities (SEND) reach their potential and thrive, where parents are confident in the improved local SEND and Alternative Provision offer of sufficient, affordable, good quality, local specialist provision.
The aims of the SEND & AP Transformation programme are to:
- Provide good quality education closer to children's home, improving children's day to day lives by reducing travel times and supporting them to learn close to their families.
- Champion good quality education for children with special educational needs, whether they are in an early years, school and college mainstream provision or special schools and alternative provision.
- Ensure that children that need special school places can access them, by increasing the number of places in the county.
- Reduce exclusions and ensure that children's needs are met in their local mainstream schools, wherever possible
- Ensure that the council understands and can meet future needs.
- Return to a balanced budget within the High Needs Block and the SEN Transport budget
To secure more places in local communities, we are investing £120m over five years to develop at least three new special schools and to create 170 new places at specialist resource bases, attached to mainstream schools.
Alongside the significant capital investment, we want to strengthen the support on offer in Norfolk schools, ensuring that they are inclusive and are using the dedicated funding within their budgets to support those with special educational needs and who require alternative provision.
We want to work together to ensure that children's needs are identified and met as early as possible, where possible preventing issues from escalating. This will help to reduce unnecessary assessments for education, health and care plans (EHCPs), helping to speed up the process for those who really need them.
As a result, the transformation programme has five specific areas of work:
- SEND support and inclusion
- EHCP performance
- Infrastructure and new provision
- Alternative provision and inclusion
- Finance
We will be working closely with our partners, including families, to help further shape our strategy and ensure that any new provision or support is right for our children and young people.
Throughout the spring and summer term we have been engaging with all of our colleagues, partners and stakeholders across education, health and care services and with parents and carers. Specifically, we held engagement workshops to shape our plans for support within schools, for specialist resource bases and special schools.
Via the following links, to the SEND Local Offer, you will find a summary of those events and our planned next steps.
The link to the Local Offer main page will provide you with access to all the context on the Local Offer. The other links to the dedicated pages for the SEND & AP Transformation Programme and Area SEND Strategy are being updated and will be fully accessible following the half-term break.
Our sincere thanks go to all colleagues who have helped us so far in shaping our transformation programme. We very much appreciate the time spent and the thoughtful, impassioned and expert contributions which you have made to help drive success as we jointly embark on this exciting venture for the future of Norfolk's schools and the young people within them.
We look forward to working with you further, collectively and individually, as the programme of projects develops over the coming months and years as we fully implement this SEND & AP Transformation Programme.