Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the impact of expenditure on high and special needs educational provision on Gloucestershire County Council's 2024-25 education budget.

Gloucestershire County Council has provisionally been allocated £97 million through the high needs national funding formula (NFF) in 2024-25, as published this July. This is a cumulative increase of 28% per head over the three years from 2021/22. The department will be publishing in December this year each local authority’s confirmed allocations for 2024/25, updated with the latest pupil number data, in their Dedicated Schools Grant allocations. The high needs NFF includes a factor based on local authorities’ historic spending, as of 2017/18. Gloucestershire is attracting £27 million in respect of that factor within its overall high needs NFF allocation for 2024/25.