Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what additional SEND (a) funding and (b) assistance has been made available for Devon since 5 July 2024.

As announced at the Autumn Budget 2024, the department is providing an additional £1 billion for high needs budgets in England in the 2025/26 financial year, bringing total high needs funding for children and young people with complex special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) to £11.9 billion. Of that total, Devon County Council is being allocated over £125 million through the high needs funding block of the dedicated schools grant (DSG). This represents an increase of £8.9 million on this year’s DSG high needs block, calculated using the high needs national funding formula (NFF). This NFF allocation is an increase of 7.7% per head of their 2 to 18 year-old population, against their equivalent 2024/25 NFF allocation.

In addition to the DSG, local authorities will also receive a separate core schools budget grant (CSBG), and funding in relation to the increase in employers’ National Insurance contributions, in the 2025/26 financial year. The CSBG, alongside other separate grants payable this year, are designed to help special schools and alternative provision with the costs of teachers’ pay and pension increases, as well as other staff pay increases. Individual local authorities’ allocations of this funding for 2025/26 will be published in due course.

The department has also been working closely with all statutory partners involved in delivering SEND services in Devon since their local area SEND inspection in May 2022, which found that insufficient progress had been made against the four areas of significant weakness identified during their previous inspection in December 2018.

In response to these findings, the department issued an Improvement Notice in September 2022, and an Accelerated Progress Plan was developed with the local authority and integrated care board. In addition, the department and NHS England have both deployed SEND advisers to assist the local area and to offer advice and support.

As part of the department’s intervention, there are robust monitoring arrangements in place. The department is holding regular formal monitoring meetings with the local authority and partners to hold the local area to account for making the necessary improvements in services and to consider what further support can be provided as part of our SEND intervention in Devon.

My right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education has now also announced £740 million for high needs capital funding in 2025/26 to support children and young people with SEND or who require alternative provision.

This new funding can be used to adapt classrooms to be more accessible for children with SEND and create specialist facilities within mainstream schools that can deliver more intensive support adapted to suit the pupils’ needs, alongside continuing to provide places to support pupils in special schools with the most complex needs.

We will confirm plans to allocate funding for the 2025/26 financial year later in the spring.