Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to help schools find the first £6,000 needed to secure SEND funding.

Pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) in mainstream schools attract funding to their schools through the formula set by the school’s local authority. The funding formula is decided by each local authority in consultation with its schools, and local authorities are required to delegate funds through the formula to a level that enables schools to meet the additional cost of pupils with SEND up to £6,000 per annum. This constitutes each school’s notional SEND budget. Local authorities use various factors to give an estimate of the number of children with SEND a school is likely to have, and consequently the notional SEND budget that the school will receive. The introduction of a national funding formula for determining schools and local authorities’ funding from April 2018 will not change this arrangement.

The School and Early Years Finance (England) Regulations 2017 state that local authorities must identify each school’s notional SEND budget from which schools are expected to meet the additional costs of their pupils with SEND, up to £6,000 per annum. Schools should therefore discuss with their local authority how much is needed for this purpose.