Special Educational Needs: Classroom Assistants

(asked on 22nd February 2024) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of increasing funding for SEND teaching assistants in schools.


Answered by
David Johnston Portrait
David Johnston
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
This question was answered on 11th March 2024

Many teaching assistants who support pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are partly or wholly funded from local authorities’ high needs budgets, as a result of assessments and consequent decisions about the additional support that those individual pupils need.

The department is increasing high needs funding nationally by £440 million (4.3%) in the 2024/25 financial year. This will bring the total of high needs funding to over £10.5 billion next year, an increase of over 60% from the 2019/20 allocations. Bradford Council is due to receive a high needs funding allocation of £42.2 million through their 2024/25 dedicated schools grant, which is a cumulative increase of 37% per head over the three years from 2021/22.

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