Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will make a comparative assessment of the higher needs funding per pupil (a) in Ipswich and (b) across England on average for pupils with (i) mild to severe and (ii) severe needs.

Suffolk County Council, in which Ipswich is located, will attract a year-on-year increase in its high needs allocation of 12.5% per head of their 2-18 population this financial year, bringing its total high needs funding allocation in 2022-23 to £96.1 million.

Suffolk County Council’s allocation of high needs funding is calculated through a national funding formula (NFF) that includes an element of funding based on the number of pupils in special schools in the county, which contributes to the cost of the place funding for those schools. This basic entitlement factor allocates a per-pupil amount of £4,660, to which an area cost adjustment is added, that reflects higher staffing costs in some areas of the country, such as London. The area cost adjustment weightings and basic entitlement per-pupil amounts for each local authority in England are set out in the published NFF calculations which can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-funding-formula-tables-for-schools-and-high-needs-2022-to-2023. The Impact of the schools NFF, 2022 to 2023 spreadsheet shows how the financial year 2022/23 NFF allocations have been calculated. This shows that Suffolk’s area cost adjustment is 1.000. How area cost adjustment is calculated is set out here in Annex A: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-funding-formula-tables-for-schools-and-high-needs-2022-to-2023.

A significant proportion of overall funding for special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) is delivered through the schools NFF and subsequently through each local authority’s local schools funding formula. The information collected from local authorities or schools does not allow us to make a comparative assessment of total SEND or high needs funding on an overall per-pupil basis, at local authority or constituency level, or taking into account the severity of pupils’ needs.