Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much funding will be allocated to support pupils with SEND in Essex in each of the next five years.

This government’s ambition is that all children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) or in alternative provision receive the right support to succeed in their education and as they move into adult life.

The department is providing an increase of almost £1 billion for high needs budgets in the 2025/26 financial year, bringing total high needs funding for children and young people with complex SEND to £11.9 billion.

The department is providing this increase to high needs funding to help meet the increase in costs local authorities will be facing next year, as they in turn provide support to schools and pupils with SEND. The impact on individual local authorities’ deficits will be variable, and it remains important that every local authority looks at what it can do within the current system to manage its high needs budget while continuing to provide the support that children with SEND need.

The department is now in the process of calculating local authorities’ indicative high needs funding allocations for the 2025/26 financial year, which it expects to publish before the end of November.

High needs budgets beyond the 2025/26 financial year are a matter for the next stage of the multi-year spending review.