Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will publish his Department's methodology for calculating the High Needs Block of dedicated school grant funding for individual local authorities; and whether that methodology takes into account (a) existing deficits and (b) increased demand for SEND high needs support.

A great education is fundamental to the success of children, their families, and our communities, as well as the success of our country. That is why we are giving schools the largest cash boost in a decade, which will give every school more money for every child. We are increasing core schools funding by £2.6 billion in the 2020/21 financial year, including an additional £780 million for children with complex special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), compared to the 2019/20 financial year. In the 2021/22 financial year, our funding for high needs will increase by a further £730 million, or 10%, bringing the total high needs budget to over £8 billion. High needs funding is allocated to local authorities through the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG).

We do not prescribe in detail how schools should spend their funding allocations, nor how local authorities should allocate their high needs funding, but local authorities and schools have statutory duties under the Children and Families Act (2014) to support children and young people with SEND. Local authorities must also spend DSG funding in line with the conditions of grant. Further information on these conditions is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dedicated-schools-grant-dsg-2020-to-2021/dsg-conditions-of-grant-2020-to-2021.

We have published the ‘Dedicated Schools Grant technical note 2020 to 2021’ which explains how the DSG allocations for this year are calculated, and the ‘schools and high needs national funding formula allocation tables for 2020/21’ show the allocations for each local authority, and the values used to calculate the final allocation. These are available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dedicated-schools-grant-dsg-2020-to-2021/dsg-technical-note-2020-to-2021 and https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-funding-formula-tables-for-schools-and-high-needs-2020-to-2021. The funding formula includes a range of proxies to reflect the underlying level of need in each local area, as well as factors to reflect the local SEND system.