For immediate release

Wrexham MP urges Welsh Government to make full ALN consequential funding available

Last week, a report went before Wrexham Council’s Lifelong Learning Scrutiny Committee. It did not make the front pages, but it should worry every parent, grandparent and employer in our community.

It told us that 29 schools in Wrexham ended the last financial year in deficit, up from 16 the year before, a rise of more than 80 per cent. Darland High School is carrying a deficit of over £1 million. The Maelor School is not far behind. Taken together, Wrexham’s schools have now tipped into the red as a whole, moving from a £1.8 million surplus to a deficit in a single year.

And Wrexham is not alone. Five years ago, schools across Wales held around £300 million in reserves, savings set aside for a rainy day. Since then, they have been forced to spend £290 million of those savings just to keep classrooms running. Today, barely £12 million is left across the whole of Wales. The rainy-day fund has all but run dry, and with nothing left to fall back on, more and more schools are sliding into deficit.

Behind those numbers are real consequences. Last year alone, 58 members of staff left Wrexham schools through redundancy and redeployment. That means fewer teachers, fewer teaching assistants, and less support for the children who need it most, including those with additional learning needs.

Here is what makes this so hard to accept: the money to ease this crisis exists. It is sitting, unallocated, with the Plaid Welsh Government in Cardiff Bay.

When the UK Labour Government took the decision to write off billions of pounds of special educational needs debt built up by councils in England, it triggered more than £330 million in consequential funding for Wales, with almost £200 million a year more to follow. That money flowed to Wales precisely because of pressures in special and additional learning needs provision. Common sense says it should be spent on exactly that.

Yet the Welsh Government has refused to commit to passing it on to our councils. All 22 local authorities in Wales, of every political colour, have condemned this. Council leaders, directors of education, and teaching unions are united in saying the same thing: this funding must reach the front line.

Ken Skates has led the campaign for the money to go to additional learning needs, and I have been proud to stand with him and my fellow Welsh Labour MPs in demanding it. When Labour, Conservative, independent and even Plaid councillors locally are all saying the same thing, the Welsh Government should listen.

And this is not happening in isolation. Since I was elected in 2024, I have campaigned on the number of young people not in education, employment or training, because I believe where you start in life should never determine where you finish. Right now, around 17 per cent of young people in Wales are NEET, well above the UK average. That is thousands of young lives at risk of drifting.

You would hope our colleges could be the answer. Instead, they are being forced to turn young people away. Coleg Cambria, which serves Wrexham, has waiting lists on dozens of courses. Across Wales, colleges expect more than 50,000 learners to enrol this September but have funding for fewer than 46,000 places. College leaders are warning, in plain terms, that turning students away will drive NEET numbers even higher.

Think about what that means for a sixteen-year-old in Wrexham this summer. Their school has lost staff. Their classmates with additional needs are waiting for support that never quite arrives. And when they try to take the next step, a construction course, health and social care, engineering, they are told there may not be a place for them. This is not a good time to be a young person in Wales, and it does not have to be this way.

The UK Labour Government has done its part. It made the difficult decisions, delivered the funding, and sent it to Wales. What is missing is the political will in Cardiff Bay to get that money to where it was always meant to go: our schools, our councils, and our children.

So my message to the Welsh Government is simple. Release the additional learning needs consequentials to local authorities. Fund the college places our young people are queuing up for. Stop treating money generated by an education crisis as a windfall to be spent elsewhere on uncosted manifesto promises.

Wrexham’s children get one childhood and one shot at their education. The money is there. Spend it on them.

ENDS