Project overview

Undertaken through a Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Coventry City Council, with funding from Coventry and the Economic and Social Research Council, this project, which was completed in 2009, focussed on the development of unit costs for education processes, especially those that relate to supporting Special Educational Needs. Another aspect of the project was the implementation of the Cost Calculator in Coventry City Council.

Achievements

•  Development of conceptual frameworks for costing education processes and services;
• Collection of time use activity data through practitioner focus groups, leading to the establishment of a robust set of unit costs for education and social care services in Coventry;
• Customisation of the existing model to calculate the true costs of provision for Looked After Children in Coventry;
• Development of a new education module for the Cost Calculator modelling education processes undertaken by Children’s Services;
• Implementation of the education module in Coventry, allowing the authority to accurately calculate the true costs of providing services to children with Special Educational Needs;
• Use of the Cost Calculator and the underlying costing methodology developed by Loughborough University to:
  • establish the true unit costs of a spectrum of Short Break services across the local authority, Primary Care Trust and voluntary sector to inform the authority’s future development of Short Breaks under the Aiming High for Disabled Children agenda;
  • analyse the financial arrangements for a major residential contract using ‘What If’ analysis;

  • provide a scenario analysis of the implications of changing the number of statutory assessments.

Education module

In the education module, users can compare and contrast the costs of children undergoing:

• Processes relating to the universal experience of children in the education system, including finding, ongoing and leaving education provision
• Processes relating to the experience of children with Special Educational Needs (SEN), including Statutory Assessment for SEN, Disputes including the SEN and Disability Tribunal (SENDIST), and the Annual Review of SEN
• The Complex Cases Panel, a professional decision-making panel for children requiring multi-agency support from education, health and social care

Downloads

Coventry Launch: Delegate Pack (pdf)

Coventry Launch: Presentation (ppt)

Contact

Jean Soper, Visiting Research Fellow
Email: Jean.Soper@gmail.com
For information about the Coventry implementation:
Si Chun Lam, Development Officer, Life Chances, Coventry City Council
Email: SiChun.Lam@coventry.gov.uk