Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will make an assessment of the effect of recent changes in the level of funding for early education on the number of nursery places available for children with special educational needs in Wandsworth; and if he will make a statement.

Our Early Years National Funding Formula contains an additional needs element that takes account of children with special educational needs (SEN). On top of this, we have introduced the Disability Access Fund which provides £615 a year to help children access the free entitlements for three and four year olds. We have commissioned new research from Frontier Economics to provide further data on the cost of providing early education and care, which will take into account the cost of providing childcare for children with special education needs and disabilities.

For children with more complex needs, local authorities can draw on their high needs funding, which is at a record high of £6 billion across England, up from £5 billion in 2013.

Since April 2017, the department has required local authorities to establish SEN inclusion funds to help providers to address the needs of individual children in receipt of the early years entitlements with SEN.

The special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) Code of Practice requires providers to have arrangements in place to support children with SEN or disabilities. These arrangements should include a clear approach to identifying and responding to SEN. In addition, the Equality Act 2010 sets out the legal obligations for local authorities to plan in advance what disabled children and young people might require and what adjustments might need to be made to prevent that disadvantage. As such, we do not specify an exact number of places for children with special educational needs. According to January 2018 early years census data, there were approximately 370 children with SEND in Wandsworth benefitting from funded early education places.

Information relating to allocations to local authorities of both high needs and early years funding is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dedicated-schools-grant-dsg-2018-to-2019.