Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to increase funding for schools with a high concentration of students with special educational needs in North Tyneside.

Schools are currently funded through the formula set by their local authority, which often uses factors such as low prior attainment and free school meals to give an estimate of the number of pupils with special educational needs (SEN) a school is likely to have. Where the cost of additional support for a child with SEN in the mainstream schools exceeds £6,000, the local authority also provides top-up funding to the school from its high needs budget. Local authorities can also give additional funding from their high needs budgets to schools that have a high concentration of pupils with SEN.

We are currently consulting on proposals for new national funding formulae for both schools and high needs, which will be introduced in 2018-19. These proposals will not change the flexibility that local authorities have to move funding from their high needs budgets to schools.

As a result of our proposals, North Tyneside Council’s funding for high needs pupils would increase by 1.8% and schools in the area would see, on average, a 0.6% increase in their funding