Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much capital funding her Department has provided for (a) specialist deaf units, (b) bases and (c) other deaf resource provisions for deaf children in England in each of the last five years.

The department does not hold all of the information requested. Available information on specific schools of interest can be found on the get information about schools service, which can be found at: https://get-information-schools.service.gov.uk/.

Revenue funding for such specialist facilities is allocated to local authorities through the high needs funding block of their dedicated schools grant. The department does not currently collect information on how much local authorities allocate in respect of the operation of specialist units.

The department does not provide capital funding for individual categories of special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) need. Rather, alongside the department’s continued investment in new special and alternative provision (AP) free schools, we provide capital grants to local authorities to help support the delivery of new places and improvements to existing provision for children and young people with SEND or who require AP.

In March 2022, the department announced High Needs Provision Capital Allocations (HNPCA) amounting to over £1.4 billion of new investment. Prior to this, we also invested a total of £300 million HNPCA funding in the 2021/22 financial year and £365 million through the Special Provision Capital Fund from the 2018/19 financial year to the 2020/21 financial year. It is ultimately up to local authorities to determine how to best prioritise their funding to address their local priorities and they can use their grants to work with any school or institution in their area, including those that provide specialist deaf provision.