Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the financial adequacy of the Inclusive Mainstream Fund for state schools facing incidences involving pupil with complex, non-statutory needs; and what steps she is taking to ensure that inclusive local clusters are not penalised by flat-rate cohort allocations.

The Inclusive Mainstream Fund (IMF) will invest over £500 million each financial year for the spending period, in schools and other education settings, to support the development of a more inclusive mainstream system. The distribution of the IMF takes account of the incidence of low prior attainment in schools and is calculated for each school, not at a cluster level. The IMF should not be seen as the only source of funding for inclusive practice. Schools should spend their IMF allocation alongside their core funding allocations, including base funding and their notional special educational needs budget. Funding for provision for children and young people with education, health and care plans continues through existing funding arrangements, including local authorities’ high needs budgets.

We are also providing around £1.8 billion over the three years from 2026/27 for local authorities to work in partnership with Integrated Care Boards to develop and deliver a new Experts at Hand offer for mainstream education settings. This new offer is designed to strengthen inclusive practice in mainstream education settings by providing a new route to access expert advice and support from education and health professionals.

To further improve inclusive practice and access to support, we will strengthen strategic special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) partnerships and propose that every school becomes part of a local SEND group. In the long term, schools will pool some inclusion funding for a more collaborative, efficient system to meet needs across their group and allow for better sharing of expertise and resources. Over time, there will be further rebalancing of funding from the High Needs budget into schools’ budgets, to give schools direct responsibility over funding to empower them to deliver for children and young people with SEND, in line with new accountability arrangements.