Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate her Department has made of the potential impact of trends in the growth of EHCPs on costs to the public purse.

Families are having to fight and go through bureaucratic and legal processes to get special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) support for their children despite funding increases to the high needs budget. These and other failures in the current system mean that families are rightly demanding reform and that is what the government is delivering. The plans for a reformed SEND system, including the allocation of £4 billion investment to support transformation of the system, were set out in the recently published Schools White Paper and SEND reform consultation, and annexes.

The department’s assessment of future SEND spending will be updated following the SEND consultation and subject to future spending reviews.