Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of allocating additional money to local authorities in the Comprehensive Spending Review to help ensure the needs of children with education, health and care plans are met.

The government is currently providing the biggest increase to schools funding in a decade, with total additional investment of £14 billion across the next 3 years. This includes significant investment in high needs. There has already been a £2.6 billion increase in 2020-21, including £780 million for high needs, and in 2021-22 there will be a further year-on-year increase of £2.2 billion overall, including an additional £730 million for high needs. High needs funding will therefore have increased by £1.5 billion in 2 years. The additional investment in high needs will go directly to local authorities to support children and young people with the most complex special educational needs and disabilities, including those with education, health and care plans.

Conversations about the upcoming Comprehensive Spending Review are currently ongoing, and the department will set out the importance of providing sufficient funding to ensure high quality high needs provision for all children who needs it, as part of these. The results from these discussions will be announced in due course.