Special Educational Needs: Finance
(asked on 14th May 2019) - View Source
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the answer of 14 May 2019 to Question 250743 on Special Educational Needs: Finance, how many and what proportion of children and young people had an Education Health and Care Plan in each year since 2013 and 2019; and how much funding his Department allocated to high needs in each of those years.
The level of high needs funding for children and young people with special educational needs (SEN) for each year are published in the dedicated schools grant (DSG) allocations each year, as follows:
Year | Amount |
2013-14 | £5.0 billion |
2014-15 | £5.2 billion |
2015-16 | £5.2 billion |
2016-17 | £5.3 billion |
2017-18* | £5.8 billion |
2018-19** | £6.1 billion |
2019-20** | £6.3 billion |
* In 2017-18 the baselines of the high needs block and the schools block within DSG were adjusted, to take account of local authorities’ spending decisions.
** Includes the £125 million added to the high needs block in 2018-19 and 2019-20, in recognition of the cost pressures local authorities have been facing, announced in December 2018.
Information on the number and proportion of children in schools with an education, health and care (EHC) plan or previously statement of SEN are published in the annual ‘SEN in England’ statistical release. A time series can be found in Table 1 at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/special-educational-needs-in-england-january-2018.
Information on all young people (up to age 25) with an EHC plan is published in the annual ‘Statements of SEN and EHC Plans’ statistical release. A time series can be found in Table 1 at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/statements-of-sen-and-ehc-plans-england-2018.
The first full year that statutory EHC plans were in place was 2015. Figures prior to this, therefore, relate to statements only. Table 2 in the following link includes the number of new EHC plans during 2014: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/statements-of-sen-and-ehc-plans-england-2018.
It is important to note that the number of EHC plans and statements of SEN does not include learning difficulty assessments (LDAs). These were previously used in a similar way as an EHC plan, for young people with SEN at a post-16 level, but were replaced by EHC plans from 2015. The last record of LDAs were removed from the system in 2016.