Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to help support local authorities to provide adequate levels of (a) estate and (b) workforce for alternative provision for children at secondary schools.

The department has published over £1.5 billion of high needs provision capital allocations for the 2022/23 and 2023/24 financial years. This funding is allocated to local authorities to support their delivery of new places and improve existing provision for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) or who require alternative provision (AP).

This funding forms part of the department’s transformational investment of £2.6 billion in new high needs provision between 2022 and 2025 and is on top of the ongoing departmental delivery of new special and AP free schools. On 6 March 2024, my right hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced 20 successful applications for new AP free schools creating over 1,700 new places.

In the SEND and AP Improvement Plan, published March 2023, the department set out its intention to give AP schools funding stability by requiring local authorities to create and distribute an AP specific budget. This will mean that resources can be targeted and distributed more effectively, supporting AP schools to recruit and retain high-quality staff.