Education Funding: Distribution

Vikki Slade Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Pippa Heylings]

My hon. Friend makes a hugely important point, and we have just heard agreement from across the Chamber about the importance of both the geographic distribution of funding and to which age groups it is distributed.

The underfunding interacts directly with the crisis in special educational needs and disabilities provision. Funding has been historically low in our county, and it cannot meet the rising demand. While there has been a 72% increase in high needs block funding since 2017, the demand for education, health and care plans has risen by 91% in Cambridgeshire over that same period.

[Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

I got some data this week that told me that our local authorities are spending £60,000 a child extra on independent special schools versus maintained special schools. In the south-west of England, only one third of children can go to state maintained schools. Does my hon. Friend agree that as schools are having that money taken away from them to support the councils, the problem is just getting worse?

[Pippa Heylings]

I could not have put it better myself. That issue is symptomatic of and a causal factor in the problems. We are seeing the gap between funding and spend widening year after year. In my area, that is compounded by rapid population growth. Cambridgeshire and Peterborough are forecast to grow by a further nearly 17% between 2023 and 2041. Schools are expanding quickly to meet demand, yet funding lags behind reality. Growth funding is limited and tightly constrained. Section 106 funding supports buildings, not staffing or ongoing SEND provision. While Cambridgeshire growth is seen as the golden goose for the national economy, local families, schools and councils are being penalised for that growth.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vikki Slade]

A few weeks ago, I raised some of these very excessive charges, although I had a bit of pushback from some residents saying, “My child needs this very expensive school.” Can the Minister confirm whether the Government are looking at companies that are coming in and making profit at the expense of our children? We are talking about children who have very complex needs. For 78 children in one local authority in my constituency, the charge is more than £100,000 each. Thirty of those children are from one school alone.

[Georgia Gould]

We have put £3 billion into specialist places to ensure that there is high-quality provision across the system. Independent specialist schools play an important part in the system, but excessive profits should not be made from the care of children. We want the money that is going into the system to go into supporting children.

We also want to ensure that every child has the right to an education within their local community. I talk to too many children who have to travel, sometimes for two hours, to get an education. As I travel around the country to look at the system, I see two things. First, the system is absolutely in crisis; there is failure in every single part. I hear that from every single part of the system and we have heard some examples today. Secondly, there are dedicated people who are trying to make it work, including those mentioned by the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire. There are special educational needs co-ordinators and local partnerships who go the extra mile. There are schools that are thinking deeply about how to provide an inclusive education. That makes a difference; parents who are having a positive experience tell us that they can finally breathe because the support is in place. There are green shoots of that change—such as partnerships between special schools and mainstream schools—which we can build on.

We take this responsibility for generational change very seriously. My commitment is to work in partnership with everyone who cares about this issue. I appreciate the opportunity to continue these conversations and to continue to talk about the work we are doing. When we bring forward the schools White Paper, there will be a full consultation on the work we are setting out, and we have heard this evening, very powerfully, how important that work is. We cannot continue to fail children with special educational needs and disabilities and their families, and we need to give the right resources to the teachers, teaching assistants and health professionals who are trying to support them every day.

Question put and agreed to.