Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much funding his Department has allocated to the (a) Liverpool city region and (b) St Helens borough to support children with SEND in each year since April 2010.

Funding for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) is drawn from the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG).

Local authorities are required to provide sufficient funds to enable schools to meet the cost of additional support for pupils with SEND, up to the value of £6,000.

When the costs of additional support required for a pupil with SEND exceed £6,000, the local authority should also allocate additional top-up funding to cover the excess costs. This top-up funding, and funding for special schools, comes from the local authority’s high needs block of the DSG.

In 2013, the schools and high needs funding blocks DSG were created. As the DSG includes other funding such as for early years, the department is unable to provide comparable figures before the creation of the blocks within the DSG in 2013-14.

The high needs funding allocations for those children with more complex SEND, from 2013-14, are set out below.

For Liverpool city region (which includes the following local authorities: Halton, Knowsley, Liverpool, Sefton, St Helens and Wirral):

For St Helen’s borough:

*In December 2018, the department allocated an additional £250 million of high needs funding, in recognition of funding pressures. This additional funding is included within the final totals displayed.