Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what was the total (1) budget, and (2) spend, on pupils with Special Educational Needs in England for each of the last five years.

The department does not identify a budget for the total education spending on special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). It is not a specific category of spending that is recorded by the department, or by local authorities, schools, colleges, and other education providers.

The department allocates funding for SEND provision in various ways, with the most significant amounts being channelled through the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) to local authorities. Within the DSG, the department allocates high needs funding for children and young people with complex SEND, along with those who need support outside a mainstream school in alternative provision. The table below sets out the DSG high needs funding block allocations from 2018/19 to 2022/23. The DSG amounts for 2022/23 and 2023/24 remain provisional until final adjustments and payments have been made.

The totals in the table above do not include other streams of funding that schools, colleges, local authorities, and other providers use to support children and young people with SEND. In particular, it does not take account of support that mainstream schools provide to those with SEND drawn from their own core budgets, where funding is provided through another element of the DSG.

Schools are not required to identify their spending on SEND provision separately from other spending. Local authorities report their spending from their high needs budgets, which can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/section-251-materials.