Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to ensure all maintained schools receive adequate funding for catering for children with special needs.

Mainstream schools are funded through the formula set by their local authority. The funding formula is decided by each local authority and often uses factors such as the prior level of attainment of the pupils in the school to give an estimate of the additional support for those with special educational needs (SEN) that the school will need to make available.

Local authorities are required to delegate funds to a level that enables schools to meet the additional cost of pupils with SEN up to £6,000 per annum, and when a school can demonstrate that the costs exceed this, the local authority should allocate top-up funding from its high needs budget.

The local authority can also use its high needs budget to give extra funding to schools with a disproportionate number of pupils with SEN.

We have provided local authorities with £130 million of additional funding for high needs this year.