Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of providing special educational needs inclusion funding directly to providers based on identified need rather than through the early years national funding formula.

The early years national funding formulae contain an additional needs element, to take account of the number of children with additional needs in an area. This is important to ensure local authority level rates, and therefore allocations, reflect the needs of children in their area.

Local authorities establish Special Educational Needs Inclusion Funds (SENIFs) locally, using the early years block (distributed via the aforementioned formulae) and high needs blocks of their Dedicated Schools Grant allocation. More information on this allocation is available at: https://skillsfunding.service.gov.uk/view-latest-funding/national-funding-allocations/DSG/2024-to-2025. These funds are intended to support local authorities to work with providers to address the needs of individual children with Special Educational Needs who are taking up the entitlements and can be passed on direct to providers by local authorities.

The government’s response on 20 September 2023 to the consultation on expanding the early education entitlements reiterated the department’s commitment, made in the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities and Alternative Provision Improvement Plan of March 2023, to undertake a review of the way local authorities operate their SENIFs.

The department intends to conduct a detailed assessment of the SENIF arrangements that local authorities currently have in place, looking at how SENIFs are being used nationally and how far they are meeting current need. The department will look to draw examples of best practice together, with a view to sector-wide dissemination, and recommend longer term changes that will improve the extent to which SENIFs can meet the needs of children taking up the entitlements.