Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the (a) initial and (b) additional allocated budgets for special needs provision in Nottinghamshire schools have been in each of the past three years.

Local authorities are legally required to provide schools with sufficient funds to enable schools to meet the additional cost of pupils with special educational needs (SEN) and disabilities, up to £6,000. Local authorities must set a notional SEN budget for every school in their area as part of their local schools formula, funded from the overall schools budget, although this funding is not ring-fenced and it remains the responsibility of each school to manage its overall budget, and ensure that the needs of all its pupils are being met.

When the costs of additional support required for a pupil with SEN exceed £6,000, the local authority should also allocate additional top-up funding to cover the excess costs. This funding comes from the local authority’s high needs budget. On 17 December 2018, we announced an addition of £250 million in high needs funding across the current financial year and the next, on top of the additional funding we had already promised. As a result, Nottinghamshire will receive an additional £1.7 million of this funding in each year, bringing their high needs funding total to £66.5 million in 2019-20.

The figures for the last three years are illustrated below.