Special Educational Needs: Knowsley and Liverpool
(asked on 26th September 2019) - View Source
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much funding his Department allocated to (a) Liverpool City Council and (b) Knowsley Borough Council to support children with SEND needs in each year since April 2010.
The information requested is not held centrally as the department does not break funding allocations down to a constituency level.
Local authorities are required to provide sufficient funds to enable schools to meet the cost of additional support for pupils with special educational needs (SEN) and disabilities, up to the value of £6,000. This funding comes from the schools block of the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG).
When the costs of additional support required for a pupil with SEN exceed £6,000, the local authority should also allocate additional top-up funding to cover the excess costs. This top-up funding and funding for special schools comes from the local authority’s high needs budget.
In 2013, the schools and high needs budgets within the DSG were created. As the DSG includes other budgets such as the early years budget, the department is unable to provide comparable figures before the creation of the blocks within the DSG in 2013-14.
In 2020-21, we will provide more than £700 million in additional high needs funding, bringing the national high needs funding total to over £7 billion. Every local authority will receive a minimum increase of 8% per head of their population aged 2-18 years old. We will provide provisional allocations to local authorities in October.
Schools and high needs funding allocations for 2013-14 to 2019-20 are as follows. In December 2018, the department allocated an additional £250 million of high needs funding nationally, in recognition of funding pressures. This additional funding is included within the final totals displayed.
In Knowsley:
Year | Schools funding figure | High needs funding figure |
2013-14 | £87.9 million | £19.2 million |
2014-15 | £86.3 million | £19.8 million |
2015-16 | £85.5 million | £19.7 million |
2016-17 | £85.4 million | £19.9 million |
2017-18 | £87.5 million | £19.7 million |
2018-19 | £89.7 million | £19.6 million |
2019-20 | £92.5 million | £20.3 million |
And in Liverpool:
Year | Schools funding figure | High needs funding figure |
2013-14 | £266.9 million | £41.4 million |
2014-15 | £267.3 million | £42.9 million |
2015-16 | £289.0 million | £44.0 million |
2016-17 | £292.9 million | £44.3 million |
2017-18 | £301.1 million | £46.1 million |
2018-19 | £302.6 million | £47.3 million |
2019-20 | £310.3 million | £49.6 million |
Both of these blocks are funded on a per-pupil basis, so where there are reductions in funding from one year to the next, this is a reflection of a reduction in pupil numbers.