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Individual Pupil Funding
1. Individual Pupil Funding (IPF) is a system of providing funding for pupils with special educational needs in school and early years settings without the need for a formal statutory assessment. It is proposed to introduce this system in Cheshire as from June 2007.
2. Funding will be allocated by a monthly audit of need. Schools will be able to provide an audit panel with supporting evidence to demonstrate that a pupil has a certain level of need and that the school has been attempting to meet the needs from within its own resources. The Panel will consider each case and allocate Individual Pupil Funding to the school in order to meet the needs of the pupil.
3. These proposals have been developed by the Individual Pupil Funding Group which consists of a range of professionals across ISIS, together with the Speech and Language Therapy Service. It has met for working days on a regular basis during the 2005-06 academic year.
4. The group has also considered models from other Local Authorities when looking to establish the Cheshire model.
5. It was agreed to look at the model in the following ways:
- Establish the level of need
- Establish a system of levels and banding to meet varying levels of need
- Establish the evidence which would need to be supplied to an audit panel in order to make accurate decisions
- Establish what should already be in place within a school setting using the already delegated monies
- Establish what the money was to be used for in order that there was clarity to schools and to enable efficient monitoring of the monies provided to schools
6. The working group has put forward the following proposal after having considered the above:
- Level 1 funding which has already been delegated
- The team will put in place, and add to guidance already issued to schools in the Companion, any additional requirements at this level in order that schools are clear how this money should be utilised
- Level 2 funding will begin the IPF criteria. There could be up to three bands of funding within this level.
- Level 3 funding will also have a possible six bands of funding.
- Levels 4, 5 and 6 will be those pupils who do require a formal assessment and may need to take up a place in specialist provision
- This model will begin to provide clarity around the level of need to be addressed within the County provision for pupils with special educational needs and our expectations of that provision.
- For all levels is envisaged that the team will put in place, for the purpose of clarity, suggestions for the use of the funding. These will be included in the guidance to schools already issued in the Companion. Again this will enable good monitoring systems to be put in place. Work around this has already started and in some cases is already completed
7. The Individual Pupil funding is based on the following areas of need:
- Behavioural
- Speech and Language
- Hearing Impairment
- Visual Impairment
- Physical
- Specific Learning Difficulties (Dyslexia)
- General Learning
- Social and Communication (ASD)
8. The IPF proposals have involved:
- Teams finalising their work on need and evidence.
- The group are currently looking particularly at early years, as there may need to be small changes made for the early years settings. This needs to be where the money is targeted in order to prevent escalation of need.
- The Team spent a full day in May to moderate all levels of need against recent and current actual pupil cases.
- The system has been trialled in the Area Placement Panels in June and July in order to match against current cases both for formal assessment and extra resources.
- Visits have been undertaken to Sefton, Lancashire, Blackburn with Darwen and Somerset to look at their systems which have been in place for a few years. .
- Once the needs and evidence have been trialled then we can add the work already completed on what the school should do with the monies provided. This, as stated previously, will go into the Primary Companion. A Secondary Companion will be printed ready for September 2007.
- The establishment of an administrative system around the Individual Pupil Funding is being considered and models of working have been sought from other LAs. This will be the work of the newly centralised Assessment and Monitoring Team working together with school colleagues..
- A programme of delivery to schools. parents and partner agencies will need to be established and delivered across the County.
- The Team will continue to work on Levels 4, 5 and 6 which will dovetail with ongoing work around the establishment of new models of provision. The CASADT team have already moved in this direction and we have trialled their work at a new Year 6 County placement panel. The panel included teachers and heads from all ASD provision plus officers. It was a successful trial demonstrating that the methods and criteria used were essential when placing pupils in provision.
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