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Consultation on cut to in-school high needs learning provision delayed The county council had suggested it would consult on a 10 per cent cut to per pupil high needs funding arrangements for schools Updated Cambridgeshire County Council's headquarters, Shire Hall, in Cambridge (Image: Strutt & Parker) Sign up to our newsletter for daily updates and breaking newsInvalid EmailSomething went wrong, please try again later. Sign up here! When you subscribe we will use the information you provide to send you these newsletters. Sometimes they’ll include recommendations for other related newsletter...

Cambridgeshire’s education director, Jonathan Lewis, told the county council’s children and young people committee on Tuesday (January 19) that a 10 per cent cut would bring Cambridgeshire in line with local authorities which are “statistical neighbours”. “Ask any headteacher whether we fund enough [through top-up funding] and they will every time tell us it’s nowhere near what the costs are, which we don’t disagree with,” Mr Lewis said, but when making the same point to the schools forum last Friday, he said “we can’t keep spending what we haven’t got”. Jonathan Lewis...

Mr Lewis told Cambridgeshire County Council’s children and young people committee on Tuesday (January 19) that the council is “very grateful” for the “quite significant” increase in funding, but he also described it as “not enough”. He described deficits on high needs education spending as a national issue, saying that his understanding of the situation is that “the majority of local authorities” have such a deficit now. He described the growing high needs education deficit in Cambridgeshire as a “ridiculous situation” and said that he believes more than half the local a...