Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to increase school places available for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities.

The department is investing £2.6 billion between 2022 and 2025 to support local authorities to deliver 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 represents a significant, transformational investment in new high needs provision. It will support local authorities to deliver new places in mainstream and special schools, as well as other specialist settings, and will also be used to improve the suitability and accessibility of existing buildings.

As part of this commitment, in March 2022, the department announced High Needs Provision Capital Allocations amounting to over £1.4 billion of new investment, focused on the 2023/24 and 2024/25 academic years. In June 2022, the department announced we will build up to 60 new, centrally delivered special and AP free schools. The application process for special schools opened on 10 June 2022.

This is alongside an increase in high needs revenue funding, which is rising by £1.65 billion over two years, between the 2021/22 and 2023/4 financial years. This is an increase of 21%, bringing total high needs revenue funding to over £9.7 billion by 2023/24. In addition, the department is continuing to work with local authorities with the highest dedicated schools grant deficits as part of the safety valve programme and the introduction of the Delivering Better Value programme.