Rip Off Britain

[jon1959]

https://www.common-wealth.org/interactive/who-owns-britain/cradle-to-grave

[Eric Cartman]

Re: Rip Off Britain

I can speak to the SEND part a little bit. There is so much money being made out of SEND right now and from what I can see it is all down to poor planning during the Cameron years. I will be generous and say Cameron had a particular interest in SEND because of his own experiences as a parent but their reforms increased the overhead of providing support at a time when LA's were being stripped bare, it was in hindsight a complete disaster waiting to happen. A few random thoughts:

- There is an entire industry built around riling parents up by lying about the process and likely outcome of an EHC request.

- The appeal system means that the most savvy and well-resourced parents by and large get heard and get better outcomes.

- We have independent placements and alternative provision that costs in the 100-200k range per child because there is very limited money available to create new state places.

- Councils are so threadbare there isn't money to improve systems that would enable better productivity and outcomes. There isn't money to monitor outcomes or use data in a proactive way to improve = everyone involved is basically lurching from fire to fire trying to put them out

- Companies that could provide these solutions are devoid of any morals or interest in helping children, regularly spending outrageous amounts on corporate warfare.

- The DFE commissioned a software provider to give them enrolment/attendance/attainment data live from schools but didn't provide a solution that councils could incorporate into their current systems - so we as a council now pay for our own implementation.

Complete scattergun of random information but basically the whole system needs tearing down.