Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what additional funding his Department plans to allocate to services for (a) deaf and (b) disabled children as part of the £1 billion catch-up funding for missed education during the covid-19 outbreak.

The £1 billion COVID-19 catch-up package is made up of £650 million to be shared across state primary and secondary schools over the 2020-21 academic year, and a National Tutoring Programme, worth £350 million, which will increase access to high-quality tuition for the most disadvantaged children and young people over the 2020-21 academic year.

The universal £650 million catch-up premium funding recognises that all pupils, irrespective of their background or location, have lost time in education. Whilst school leaders will decide how it is used, the intention is that this money will be spent on the most effective interventions. The funding will be available for all state-funded mainstream and special schools, and alternative provision. All schools should use their catch-up premium funding as a single total from which to prioritise support for all pupils, guided by the level of individual need.

On Monday 20 July we announced more details about how the funding will be distributed to schools. This confirmed that a primary school of 200 pupils will receive £16,000 while a secondary school of 1,000 pupils will receive £80,000. Special, alternative provision and hospital schools will be funded at three times the rate of mainstream schools for the 2020-21 academic year.

This year we are providing £780 million additional high needs funding across England for children with the most complex special educational needs and disabilities. We are providing a further £730 million in 2021-22, which will bring the total high needs budget to over £8 billion. This is in addition to the catch-up funding.