Special Educational Needs

(asked on 9th May 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the change in the level of spending on SEND provision per pupil with special educational needs or disabilities has been since 2015.


Answered by
Nadhim Zahawi Portrait
Nadhim Zahawi
This question was answered on 15th May 2019

We do not collect information on the spending by schools on individual pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Support for those with more complex SEND are funded through the local authorities high needs budgets.

Our total high needs funding allocations since 2015 are:

Year

Amount

2015-16

£5.2 billion

2016-17

£5.3 billion

2017-18

£5.8 billion

2018-19*

£6.1 billion

2019-20*

£6.3 billion

The amounts between financial years are not directly comparable due to structural changes in the high needs funding baseline.

*Both of these years include £125 million additional funding, which was announced in December 2018.

The total level of local authorities’ high needs gross expenditure, not including place funding, can be found in the section 251 outturn data, and these are as follows:

Year

Amount

2015-16

£3.96 billion

2016-17

£4.21 billion

2017-18

£4.50 billion

2018-19*

£4.46 billion

*These years use high needs budget data, rather than outturn data, as we have not yet published the high needs outturns.

The majority of high needs funding is directed towards pupils with education, health and care plans (EHCP). The number of pupils each year with plans can be found in the school census data, which is published in January. The numbers for each year are as follows:

Year

Number

2015

240,163

2016

256,315

2017

287,290

2018

319,819

The number of pupils with SEND in 2019 has not yet been published. This figure is an amalgamation of EHCP and Statements of SEND, but this does not include Learning Difficulty Assessments (LDA), and so is not an accurate comparison year-on-year. LDAs were phased out with the introduction of EHCPs, and the last LDAs were phased out of the system in 2016.

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