Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many staff were employed to support pupils with special educational needs and disabilities in each year since 2010; and how much funding her Department provided for these staff in the same period.

The department is committed to ensuring that all pupils, including those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) can reach their potential and receive excellent support from their teachers.

Alongside excellent teachers, teaching assistants play an important role supporting pupils with SEND to fulfil their potential in mainstream and special schools.

Information on the school workforce in England is collected as part of the annual School Workforce Census each November. Information is published in the ‘School Workforce in England’ statistical publication, which can be accessed here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-workforce-in-england.

Financial information on local authority and school expenditure, including staff costs, is published in the annual official statistic ‘LA and school expenditure.’ This can be accessed here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/la-and-school-expenditure. The latest figures available are for the 2021/22 financial year, in which £11.7 billion was spent on teaching staff and £4.4 billion on education support staff.

Within that publication, information can be found on high needs place funding from both the individual schools budget and high needs funding from the local authority budget. High needs funding is specifically for supporting children with more complex SEND. In the 2021/22 financial year there was £1.1 billion of high needs place funding within the individual schools budget, plus £6.6 billion on high needs expenditure outside the individual schools budget.