Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to Answer of 20 October 2021 to Question 57208 on Special Educational Needs: Expenditure, what estimate his Department has made of the average per pupil funding provided through Education Health and Care plans in each year since 2016.

I refer the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood to the answer I gave on 20 October 2021 to Question 57208. Further detail, beyond that set out in my answer, is not available.

The department does not prescribe in detail how local authorities should allocate their high needs funding. The level of funding that an individual child or young person with an education, health, and care plan (EHC) attracts to a school or college is not information that is collected by the department from schools and colleges, or from local authorities to which we allocate high needs funding. The department can, therefore, provide neither specific per pupil levels of funding, nor averages for each year.

Furthermore, because of various adjustments between years in the funding allocated, the gradual introduction of EHC plans from 2014, and the different periods covered by the data that are collected, it is not possible to show the average funding per pupil with an EHC plan on a like-for-like basis.