Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the average cost was to educate (a) a child and (b) an adult with SEN in each of the last 20 years.

Children and young people with special educational needs are educated in a broad range of settings, most of which do not report their costs in a way that enables the department to isolate the costs of their education. Due to this, the department does not hold the information requested on the average cost.

Through the department’s special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and alternative provision (AP) Improvement Plan, the department is reforming the SEND system so that when a child or young person requires specialist provision, they get access to the support they need, and parents do not face an adversarial system to secure this. To support this, the department have increased the high needs budget to £10.54 billion, which is 60% more than in 2019/20. The department is also investing £2.6 billion to deliver new specialist and AP places and improve existing provision.