To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the Local Government Association report entitled Have we reached a ‘tipping point’?: Trends in spending for children and young people with SEND in England, what estimate he has made of the level of the national deficit on high needs block funding by the end of (a) 2018-19, (b) 2019-20, and (c) 2020-21.
Answered on
1 March 2019
We have listened to local authorities’ and schools’ concerns about the rising costs of special educational needs and disabilities provision and the pressure this causes on their budgets. That is why in December we announced an additional £250 million of funding for high needs over this financial year and the next. Overall funding for high needs will therefore rise to £6.3 billion in 2019-20.
The department has done work to understand the drivers of these increasing costs including the shift in the proportion of children with high needs being educated in the specialist and independent sectors, rather than mainstream schools. To build on this work, we will be launching a call for evidence looking into the financial incentives in the system. We want to gather evidence on any perverse incentives in the system and on the use of resources mainstream schools have to spend on special educational needs to inform future policy development.
Data reported to us by local authorities show an overall planned dedicated schools’ grant deficit of £96 million in 2018-19. We do not have comparable figures for years beyond this as data from local authorities have not been collected by the department yet. Funding for 2020-21 and beyond will be determined in the next Spending Review.
The figures quoted in the Local Government Association report are based on the local authorities surveyed and may reflect varying in-year budgeting practises.