To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the impact of Maintained Nursery Schools funding on their ability to adequately support SEND children.
Answered on
9 February 2022
The government recognises that maintained nursery schools make a valuable contribution to improving the lives of some of our most disadvantaged children.
At Spending Review on 27 October 2021, we announced that we are investing additional funding for the early years entitlements worth £160 million in financial year 2022-23, £180 million in 2023-24 and £170 million in 2024-25, compared to the current financial year. This is for local authorities to increase hourly rates paid to childcare providers, including maintained nursery schools, for the government’s free childcare entitlement offers and reflects cost pressures as well as anticipated changes in the number of eligible children.
For 2022-23 we will increase the hourly funding rates for all local authorities by 21p an hour for the two-year-old entitlement and, for the vast majority of areas, by 17p an hour for the three- and four-year-old entitlement.
The government has confirmed continuation of maintained nursery school supplementary funding throughout the Spending Review period, providing the sector with long-term certainty. For the 2022-23 financial year, we will increase the maintained nursery schools supplementary hourly funding rate by 3.5%, equivalent to the increase in the three- and four-year-old hourly funding rates.
We also have a range of support for children with special educational needs (SEN). Specifically for early years, the early years national funding formula contains an additional needs element to take account of the number of three- and four-year-old children with additional needs in an area, and the SEN Inclusion Fund requires local authorities to work with providers to address the needs of individual children with SEN. We have also increased the value of the disability access fund which, for the 2022-23 financial year, will be at least £800 per eligible child per year.
More generally, high needs funding for children and young people with complex needs is increasing in the next financial year 2022-23 by £1 billion to over £9.1 billion. This unprecedented increase of 13% comes on top of the £1.5 billion increase over the last two years and will continue to support local authorities and schools with the increasing costs they are facing. Local authorities are responsible for deciding how much of their high needs funding is spent on children under 5.