Il consiglio spende £ 950 al giorno per portare a scuola un bambino con bisogni speciali
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/09/28/council-spends-950-daily-special-needs-child-to-school/?msockid=0784ce2c084566e81a1fdbff092667cd
di AnonymousTimewaster
23 commenti
£160k on a single student to get to school is obvious madness. so why is no politician doing anything about it.
I’m not even joking, we need to have a discussion as to if all kids should be entitled to an education when they are this sick
What is the point spending multiple 6 figures a year on one kid who will never amount to anything useful, while state schools get but a fraction of that per pupil. There are smart kids in shithole cities and towns in rotting schools who don’t get a sniff of that kind of funding.
I get why £950 a day sounds crazy but for some kids it’s literally the only way they can get a proper education safely.. Specialised transport, trained staff and long distances add up fast.. Councils don’t have a choice legally and yeah it’s expensive but it’s about making sure the kid isn’t left behind..
That said, there are ways it could be made more efficient.. expanding local specialist provision, sharing transport between compatible children, flexible scheduling, training existing staff for SEND support and investing in better vehicles or equipment.. Even early intervention or local therapy could reduce the need for long-distance travel over time.. None of these are perfect fixes but they show the cost could be managed better without compromising care..
The SEND system is so abused
My niece is given by the council money to have a taxi to and from her school (£25 each way) because of anxiety
I mean who could have predicted that closing special educational needs schools would result in this…
I’m sure others will want to use this as an excuse to disenfranchise these children from school entirely, or reduce the amount of kids getting the help they need, however I think it raises a point that I frequently find to be causing many of our most obscene costs as a nation: overreliance on the private sector for public need.
It cannot possibly be cheaper for a council to spend £160k getting a kid to school than to set up their own services in the long term.
This is the sad result of decades of over-privatisation and defunding of government services at every single level. In decades gone by, councils would run the schools, not private academies. That would include SEND schools. Now, they’re sending them off to private schools because they have no facilities of their own. Because we never bothered to build any or upkeep the ones we did have.
The solution here is for the government to invest in dedicated council-ran facilities (and transport) instead of paying the private sector hand over fist for every single service they provide.
I would love to add to this post, but I literally can’t read what the article has to say as you have to pay for it. I dont think going by the headline and saying whether the child is worth it or not is a very good idea.
Okay, and? Are we saying that children with special needs shouldn’t be given help?
I know this country is a hateful shithole, but i figured we at least cared about kids
Jeez, is this how far we have sunk? Writing off children because they will never “contribute” in the future? Are you going to be telling them they can’t have the surgery and drugs that keep them alive as well?
I know councils have legal obligations but whatever happened to common sense? It’s obviously easier to ignore a matter then you’re spending other people’s money.
I can barely keep track of who to be angry at anymore: the asylum seekers; the immigrants; the mentally ill; special needs children – anyone but the super rich, who clearly aren’t responsible for any of this mess.
And the parents of the said child are within the pub or walking their dog.
While we all pay taxes to take their child to school.
Uk has become the laughing stock of planet earth
What will we do when the money runs out, do special kids go to school, or poor kids get fed, or old people get a pension, or boat people get saved. One day it’ll run out and tough decisions will need to be made.
£950 a day!
>In one instance, a pupil in Buckinghamshire travels 59 miles to a boarding school twice a week in a specialist medical vehicle at a cost of £949.62 per day. It is the highest daily transport cost reported under the FOIs.
… for two days of the week.
I’m sure people will say “that’s still crazy even if it’s just twice a week!” but if you’re having to be weaselly with your words to make your argument you already know your argument is shit.
Ohhh boy this again
There are plenty of SEN kids in schools that are both mainstream and not, and many will contribute for many years.
Who will and who won’t? We just don’t know.
Simple fact is even if they won’t ever contribute or even if their disability or illness is the reason they eventually will meet their maker before they collect their exam results, the fact remains we can’t speculate when we don’t know.
The idea that council tax goes to people disproportionately is nothing new. Also SEN kids have had taxis and other transport paid for going back decades, it was a thing back in the 80s
It is less that the council spends this amount, it is that someone is allowed to charge this amount, without investigation into the service provider and the people who rubber-stamped the contract.
The UK is fortunate in that corruption doesn’t really exist among the people on the ground – they have internalised the mantra that ‘such things wouldn’t be cricket’ because the UK is fair and decent and above all that. No, the corruption happens in the corridors of power, which is why so many in a nominally very wealthy country are so poor.
I used to work at a private ambulance company and we had a similar job we did, 3 times a week to transport a pt who needed a tracheostomy managed to dialysis appointments, the company charged 1300 a day to do this, 1300 x 3 x 52= £202800 per year, we moved that patient for years, they were the owners favourite patient
It’s all very well bleating about these children’s educations not being worth all this money, but it’s the law. They have to be educated. The money is going to be spent.
But yknow, if it bothers you that much, maybe stand up for the shit home educators get, because that is the only option that is going to save your precious taxes.
We need more SEND schools the fact these poor kids are having to travel these insane distances just to be able to have an education is embarrassment. Just 0.14% of the population are in jail at the moment, but of those about 42% where expelled from education, yes the costs of these schools are huge but if that can prevent the majority of these kids falling out of education all together and hopefully prepare them for life after school and get jobs and become productive members of society then it will have payed for it’s self hundreds of times over.
My kid went to a state send school.
He was struggling. Badly. The behaviour there was beyond what he did.
We got him out.
The council now pays £50,000 a year to educate him in a private send school.
However… his peers, they’re now attending 1-2 hours a day. They’re criminalised already, no ambition, no hope.
My kid.
He’s applying for college. L1 equine. He’ll move up to l2&3.
After that he wants to join the army. Hopefully as a farrier.
That £200,000 has changed his future.
£950 a day sounds dodgy as shit they should investigate whoever negotiated that.
Transport isn’t cheap by any means but that certainly is not the norm
Typically with send schools/day centers its mini bus with the slottable seats which can be taken out/added depending on the pupils mobility i.e. make more wheelchair space or less. Driver and an escort incase of any medical issue in transit.
This is almost certainly result of poor procurement, where they didn’t properly make the opportunity for someone to bid half that.
I have just done another £3m on a contract with a government scheme that I know for a fact has similarly poor procurement, is uncompetitive and poorly tendered, so I just ratchet up the cost and nobody cares. I don’t get outbid despite my taking the absolute piss on price.
Often things are quite competitive, but when it’s obvious that it’s not, and the buyer is just bad at their job, it doesn’t take long for people like me to realise.
I had what you might call obscene profit in the last few contracts, but this recent one I have escalated from profane to really offensive, and doubled profits. It’s ‘faced only token resistance, as I expected.
Nobody cares. Not their money. It’s disgraceful.
I’d much rather be in a situation where my offers are competitive for the taxpayer and the procurement ensuring that.
This is being written as if special needs children that are somehow a problem for costing money which is absolutely awful totally discriminatory and totally disgusting. It is a deliberately inflammatory article designed to stir up hatred