TEACHERS and union officials have lined up to warn proposed radical changes to the funding of special educational needs provision will have a chain of disastrous social and economic consequences.

Staff from the county’s seven Pupil Referral Units have issued the alert just days before North Yorkshire County Council closes its consultation on “remodelling” its budget for children and young people with high needs.

They have claimed proposed changes will lead to:

l Pupil Referral Units either closing or losing most of their staff and seriously restricting their varied curriculum

l Rising truancy, child exploitation and antisocial behaviour and costs to the public purse

l Mainstream schools being told to stop excluding high needs pupils and extra classroom disruption.

A consultation meeting at County Hall, in Northallerton saw council officers emphasise changes were necessary as the £44.8m government funding the authority receives for special educational provision had not increased in line with the soaring number of people aged 25 and under assessed as needing an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP).

About 1.6 per cent of the 163,000 people aged 25 and below in the county have an EHCP, but this is expected to rise to more than 3,300 by 2022, a 30 per cent increase.

The council says changing the way the services are funded will ensure it makes the best use of the £44.8m and make sure the authority meets the needs of those with an EHCP.

The meeting became increasingly heated as teachers  said the council’s proposals would see alternative education provision cut by more than 80 per cent at units such as those in Northallerton, Harrogate and Scarborough over the next six months.

Art teacher Kate Kersey said it would be impossible to run many subjects under the proposals. She said: “The main subjects of maths and English would stay, but behaviour within the Pupil Referral Service would disintegrate, it would be very difficult to teach the children with a skeleton staff. It would be an absolute disaster, pupils are furious. Pupils would not go to school.”

English teacher Alex Boyce said students that were “already at the edge of the community would lose their safety net”.

He said: “They are already vulnerable and have very difficult lives with increasing mental health needs. I would imagine there would be an increase in truancy, students missing from education, an increase in coercion into criminal activity, drug running on County Lines and we already have a problem with that with some of our students.”

National Education Union organiser Karen Carberry said the council needed to listen.