Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of funding available to local authorities for specialist education services for deaf children.

We want children with special educational needs and disabilities to be able to reach their full potential.

Nationally, high needs funding has risen by £1 billion since 2013-14, to just under £6 billion in 2018-19. Allocations for individual local authorities can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dedicated-schools-grant-dsg-2018-to-2019.

However, we recognise that costs have increased which is why we are providing extensive support to schools to deliver the best value possible with available resources. This includes a high needs benchmarking tool to allow local authorities to compare their spending in this area.

We are monitoring the impact of our national funding formula on high needs and are keeping the overall level of funding under review.