PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Special Educational Needs: Finance (24 March 2023)

The core schools budget is £4 billion higher this financial year than last year and will rise by another £3.5 billion, on top of that, in the next financial year, reaching a total of £57.3 billion. Taken together, this means an increase of over 15% in just two years.

Local authorities are required by regulations to identify for each of their mainstream schools, through their local schools funding formula, a notional special educational needs (SEN) budget within which the school is expected to meet the additional cost (up to £6,000 per pupil) of supporting pupils with SEN, including those with an education health and care (EHC) plan. The department has issued guidance to local authorities on their calculation of the notional SEN budget using their local funding formula.

When the costs of additional support required for a pupil with SEN exceed £6,000, the authority should also allocate additional top-up funding to cover the excess costs. This funding comes from the authority’s high needs budget. Overall, high needs funding (part of the overall core schools budget referred to above) is increasing to £10.1 billion in financial year 2023/24, an increase of over 50% from the 2019/20 allocations. Typically, high needs funding is for children and young people with an EHC plan, in both mainstream and special schools, though local authorities have the discretion to provide high needs funding for those without an EHC plan.