SEND Budget Funding

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd December 2025 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Barran]

To ask His Majesty’s Government how the commitment to fund SEND budgets centrally as announced in the Budget will affect mainstream school budgets.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education, and the Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government have been clear that SEND pressures will be absorbed within the overall Government DEL budget from 2028-29, such that the Government would not expect local authorities to need to fund future special educational needs costs from general funds. Budgets from 2028-29 onwards, including the core schools budget, will be confirmed at the 2027 spending review.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank the Minister for that Answer. On this side of the House, we genuinely wish the Government every success with their work on the reforms to the special educational needs system. As the noble Baroness knows, the expected annual deficit on the dedicated schools grant is over £6 billion in 2028-29, which is a huge number. While the Government have been very clear that this will come from current RDEL allocations, they have not specified a funding plan to cover this. Anyone who has been involved in SR negotiations will know that finding £6.3 billion, apparently from other government departments rather than the DfE, will be incredibly difficult, if not impossible.

Of course, this is not even about £6.3 billion in one year; in the OBR document, if you look at the three years beyond this SR period, you see that the figure for the projected deficit is well over £20 billion. So I hope the noble Baroness will understand why schools and parents are worried, and why more clarity is needed about who is going to pay for this. I hope she can give us that now.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I take the noble Baroness’s assurance that noble Lords opposite want to support the Government in reforming the SEND system; I believe that to be true. However, it is also the case that there has been a fair amount of misinformation being peddled, not least by some of her colleagues at the other end of Parliament, about the nature and source of the £6 billion, and the way in which it will be dealt with in 2028-29. As I made clear in the original Answer, in the Budget the Treasury was very clear, in careful wording, that future funding implications will be managed within the overall Government DEL envelope—not the DfE’s DEL—and will be part of the spending review that will start in 2027.

The other important point is that that figure assumes no reform of the SEND system, and of course that reform will be focused first and foremost on ensuring that children and their families get better outcomes than they are getting from the system at the moment, and it will be important to ensure that that happens. It will also make system more sustainable.

I hope that all those interested in SEND reform will, for example, take part in the quite extensive engagement activity that is currently under way to help to inform those reforms.