Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she plans to allocate more support to (a) vulnerable and (b) disabled children in need of Educational Health Care Plans.

The department will be allocating more support to children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), including those who require education, health and care (EHC) plans.

High needs funding will be rising to £10.1 billion in the 2023/24 financial year, an increase of over 50% from the 2019/20 financial year allocations.

Both special schools and alternative provision (AP) schools will benefit from the additional funding allocated for the 2023/24 financial year. To ensure that they see increases equivalent to those that mainstream schools will receive, we have introduced a new condition that local authorities must pass on a 3.4% increase in total funding per place, to each special and AP maintained school and academy.

Local authorities will be able to use the rest of their additional allocation of high needs funding to support young people with special educational needs and disabilities in mainstream schools and elsewhere, including those requiring an EHC plan.

The department is also currently in the process of reviewing consultation responses through the SEND and AP Green Paper.

We are committed to publishing a full response to the SEND and AP Green Paper in an improvement plan early this year.