Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to allocate additional (a) funding and (b) resources to special educational needs provision in (a) Suffolk and (b) England.

As part of the boost to school funding, announced at the spending round last year, mainstream schools in Suffolk will attract £433.1 million this coming year, which will help them provide resources for their pupils with special educational needs. In England the overall increases for schools will be £14.6 billion over 3 years - £2.6 billion in 2020-21, £4.8 billion in 2021-22 and £7.1 billion in 2022-23.

For 2020-21, these overall increases include £780 million additional high needs funding, bringing the total funding for children and young people with the most complex needs to £7.2 billion. Every local authority will see an increase in high needs funding of at least 8% per head of population aged 2 to 18. Suffolk county council will receive £75.5 million of high needs funding in 2020-21, 11.1 million more than in 2019-20. This increase will help the council and other local authorities with the resources they need to support those young people who need the most support, including those with education, health and care plans.

Allocations for high needs in 2021-22 and 2022-23 will be announced in due course.