Kent’s £144m SEND Crisis: Private School Costs Soar as Parents Fight for Places and New Schools Stall

Kent County Council is spending more than five times as much sending children with special educational needs to private schools as it did six years ago. Yet the number of pupils hasn’t even trebled.

And while the bill has been climbing, two new state-funded special schools that were supposed to open this September remain unbuilt. KCC estimates those schools could eventually save £11.1 million a year.

Meanwhile, parents are taking the council to tribunal to get their children the education they need — and many are winning.

So how did Kent end up with a private-school bill approaching £144 million, and who’s responsible for bringing it under control?

A £28m bill becomes £144m

The figures come from Freedom of Information requests made to KCC by education commentator and former grammar school headteacher Peter Read (pictured), who has investigated Kent’s special educational needs provision for years.

In 2019/20, KCC’s reported spending on private schools for pupils with Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) was £27.7 million. By 2025/26, it had reached £143.8 million.

That’s an increase of almost 420%.

An EHCP is a legal document setting out the extra educational help a child or young person needs. Where a suitable place isn’t available in a state-funded school, the council may have to pay for a private placement.

The chart shows just how quickly the bill has climbed. The sharpest cash increase came in the latest financial year, when spending rose by almost £31 million.

More children need specialist education. That’s certainly part of the explanation. Read’s figures show private-school pupil numbers increasing from 901 to 2,496.

But while pupil numbers rose by 177%, spending rose by almost 420%. The cost has increased considerably faster than the number of children.

Why is Kent spending so much more per pupil?

Dividing the total bill by the number of pupils reveals another worrying trend.

Six years ago, KCC’s reported expenditure worked out at roughly £30,700 per pupil. Today, it’s approximately £57,600 — an increase of almost 88%.

And in the latest financial year alone, average expenditure per pupil rose by nearly 14%.

These are averages, not the fees charged for every child. They may reflect children needing more intensive support, different schools being used, or changes in what the council pays for. They don’t prove private schools have increased their prices by 88%.

Read identifies a handful of placements costing more than £300,000 annually. Those figures are striking, but without knowing what care and support is included, it would be wrong to suggest they represent overcharging.

Nevertheless, the overall rise raises an obvious question: how much is being driven by children’s changing needs, and how much by higher fees and the shortage of suitable schools?

KCC should be able to explain the difference.

Parents are winning their appeals — but why must they fight?

Read believes two things are driving the growing use of private special schools.

First, the number of children needing specialist education has risen faster than Kent’s ability to provide suitable places.

Second, parents are successfully challenging KCC’s decisions at independent SEND tribunals.

When parents believe the council has named an unsuitable school in their child’s EHCP, they can appeal. If the tribunal agrees that an independent school is necessary and the legal requirements are met, KCC may have to fund that placement.

Read estimates parents’ success rate at around 90% or more and believes the council gives way in many cases before a hearing. However, those particular claims need checking against Kent’s own appeal records.

National figures show just how often parents succeed. In 2024/25, 99% of SEND appeals decided by tribunals were at least mainly in favour of families. That figure covers many different disagreements about special educational needs, not just private-school placements, and it isn’t a Kent-specific percentage.

But the bigger question is why families are having to fight at all.

Tribunals aren’t creating children’s disabilities or their need for suitable education. They’re deciding disputes over the support and placements those children should receive.

Parents exercising their legal rights aren’t the cause of Kent’s financial crisis. If suitable provision isn’t available locally, that is a problem the education system must address.

And the shortage of places is something KCC has known about for years.

Two schools promised for 2026. Neither delivered.

In October 2023, KCC formally approved arrangements for two new state-funded special schools.

One would provide 250 places in Swanley, on the former Birchwood Primary School site. The other would provide 120 places in Whitstable, at Church Street Playing Fields.

Both were expected to open in September 2026.

That date has come and gone. Neither school is open, and KCC’s latest published plans show places arriving gradually between 2028 and 2031.

The delays have different causes.

At Swanley, progress has been held up by government arrangements and preparations for the site. KCC’s February 2026 records estimated demolition of the old buildings at around £700,000.

Whitstable faces a further obstacle. Local residents have applied to have Church Street Playing Fields protected as a village green, arguing that the land has long been used for recreation.

An independent inspector has recommended refusing that application. KCC councillors are due to consider the matter on 11 November 2026. Even if the application is rejected, that won’t automatically grant planning permission or guarantee construction.

The government is responsible for delivering the new schools, while KCC is responsible for planning sufficient school provision and making the sites available.

In February 2026, the council chose to keep the projects rather than accept government money to develop alternative provision. Whether that proves the right decision will depend heavily on how quickly the schools are actually delivered.

The £11.1 million the council could save

Here is what makes those delays especially important.

In February 2026, KCC calculated that a place in a state-funded special school costs approximately £26,000 a year, compared with £56,000 in an independent special school.

Using that difference, it estimated that the new schools could eventually avoid £11.1 million in annual spending once all 370 places were available.

That’s £7.5 million from Swanley and £3.6 million from Whitstable.

These are predicted savings, not guaranteed money in the bank. They depend on the new schools taking children who would otherwise need more expensive private placements.

Nor can we simply claim that each year of delay has already cost taxpayers £11.1 million. The schools were always expected to fill gradually, and the precise financial effect of the delays hasn’t been established.

Nevertheless, the council’s own figures show why delivering them matters.

Kent’s growing private-school bill isn’t just about rising demand. It’s also about whether the public education system has enough suitable places, in the right locations, when children need them.

What about Folkestone and Hythe?

This isn’t simply a problem affecting families in North Kent.

Read’s figures identify Compass Community in Folkestone as educating 40 Kent-funded pupils at an average annual reported fee of £73,331.

That works out at approximately £2.93 million for those placements. The children are funded by KCC but don’t necessarily all live in Folkestone and Hythe.

KCC’s November 2025 procurement papers also identified Folkestone and Hythe as one of the areas without a school participating in its then purchasing framework for independent special-school places.

That didn’t mean there were no private special schools locally. It meant KCC had to rely on other purchasing arrangements, potentially making it harder to plan provision and control costs.

For families, the immediate concern is finding a suitable school without lengthy journeys or prolonged disputes. For taxpayers, it’s whether KCC has planned and purchased that provision effectively.

Who is accountable?

Reform UK inherited Kent’s SEND financial problems when it took control of the county council in May 2025. The crisis didn’t begin with the present administration, and blaming it for six years of rising expenditure would be misleading.

But the current leadership is responsible for explaining what happens next.

It must also explain why the figures obtained by Peter Read don’t directly match some of KCC’s published spending reports. The council uses different categories of placements and different ways of counting pupils. Those differences may be legitimate, but the public deserves an explanation in plain English.

What families need is suitable education. What taxpayers need is confidence that the money is being spent properly. Neither should require repeated Freedom of Information requests to find out what’s happening.

Peter Read’s work has exposed the scale of the problem. The council’s own records confirm that long-awaited new schools are part of the proposed solution.

But promises don’t educate children, and planned savings don’t reduce bills.

Kent’s private SEND school bill has quintupled, parents are fighting for suitable provision, and two schools intended to relieve the pressure remain unbuilt.

The question for KCC, Reform UK’s leadership and the Department for Education is simple:

When will Kent have enough suitable school places for its children — and how much more will the public have to pay before it does?

The Shepway Vox Team

Delivering Dissent Since 2015