Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the adequacy of the funding provided by her Department to schools for children with SEND who (a) have and (b) do not have an education, health and care plan in Hornsey and Wood Green constituency.

The majority of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) do not have an education, health and care (EHC) plan, and are supported by their schools from the allocations of funding they receive for all their pupils.

For those children with the most complex needs, the department announced in July 2022 that we would be increasing high needs funding, within the core schools budget, by £1.65 billion over two years, between the 2021/22 and 2023/24 financial years. This is an increase of 21% and will bring total high needs funding to £9.7 billion by 2023/24. The provisional high needs funding allocation for Haringey in the 2023/24 financial year is £54 million. This represents an increase of 20% per pupil on the amount of high needs funding allocated over two years to 2023/24 compared to 2021/22. Overall, the high needs budget has risen by more than 40% over three years.

Funding provided through the schools National Funding Formula (NFF) should be used by schools to support pupils with low to mid-level SEND, who are educated in mainstream schools, and may not have an EHC plan. Schools in Hornsey and Wood Green are attracting £123.3 million in 2023/24, based on the schools NFF. This represents an increase of 5.2% per pupil for their pupil-led funding across two years to 2023/24 compared to 2021/22. Constituency figures are based on an aggregate of school allocations.

In addition to the figures above, the department will allocate more funding in 2023/24 following the £2 billion funding increases announced in the 2022 Autumn Statement. This additional funding will be used to support both mainstream schools, including those in Hornsey and Wood Green, and local authorities, including Haringey, with the costs of supporting children and young people with SEND. The department will set out our plans for allocation shortly.