Asked by: Peter Bottomley (Conservative - Worthing West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will make it his policy to calculate and update each year the amount of high needs funding to be allocated on the number of children being diagnosed with special needs; and what his policy is on directly correlating funding with need.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
The high needs national funding formula allocates funding to local authorities through a range of proxy factors, including socio-economic deprivation, low attainment and disability. This is to avoid the perverse incentive to label children as having special educational needs (SEN) or a disability to secure additional funding, which would arise if the number of education, health and care plans determined the amount of funding allocated. As identified in ‘research on funding for young people with special educational needs’, a report by ISOS Partnership in 2015, there is a significant correlation between these proxy indicators and SEN. The use of these proxy indicators means that local authorities with higher proportions of SEN children typically attract additional funding.The research report can be found at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/445519/DFE-RR470_-_Funding_for_young_people_with_special_educational_needs.pdf.
Asked by: Peter Bottomley (Conservative - Worthing West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the potential effect of the devolution of the adult education budget on the development of literacy, numeracy and digital skills.
Answered by Anne Milton
By devolving the Adult Education Budget to Mayoral Combined Authorities, local areas will be able to shape the delivery of skills for the benefit of their residents. To make sure that there is a quality and consistent offer throughout, the department will continue to specify which qualifications will be eligible for full funding through the English, mathematics and digital statutory duties.
Asked by: Peter Bottomley (Conservative - Worthing West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what public funding has been provided to the Workers Educational Association in each of the last three years; and what plans the Government has to fund the Workers Educational Association in the future.
Answered by Anne Milton
The table attached shows the amount funding paid by the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) to the Workers Educational Association for the past three funding years (from August to July).
The Workers Educational Association are in scope to receive an allocation and will be notified of the amount of funding available to them shortly.
For 2018 to 2019, the ESFA will continue to allocate the Adult Education Budget (AEB).
From 2019 to 2020, responsibility for the AEB will be devolved to eight Mayoral Combined Authorities (MCAs) and the Greater London Authority.
Once authorities take on the role they will, within the agreed conditions of their devolution deal, be responsible for commissioning AEB provision in their local areas, having the freedom to set their own priorities, whilst still being subject to the statutory duties of my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State. This will allow them to focus on meeting local area need and delivering local economic objectives.
The ESFA will continue to allocate funding to providers that do not deliver in the devolved areas.