Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 21 May 2025 to Question 52032 on Special Educational Needs: Finance, what information her Department holds on the amount of additional funding per pupil above £6,000 that was provided by Cambridgeshire County Council for pupils in mainstream schools in each of the last five years.

The average additional high needs top-up funding amounts per pupil, covering the costs of pupils with special educational needs in Cambridgeshire mainstream maintained schools and academies, in excess of £6,000 per annum, are set out in the table below. This is from the latest available annual actual expenditure returns provided to the department by Cambridgeshire County Council, and the school census data. In this period, the number of children attracting top-up funding has grown from 1,600 to 2,900. As a result, it is likely that the severity of needs being addressed has changed over the period.

To note:

• The expenditure is rounded to the nearest £100, and is an average of the separate amounts relating to primary and secondary schools.
• The expenditure data for each year is taken from the returns provided by local authorities under section 251 of the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009.