Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if his Department will review the resources provided to local authorities in order to meet the service standards set out in the Special Educational Needs Code of Practice.

The department announced on 16 December that high needs funding for children and young people with complex needs is increasing in financial year 2022-23 by £1 billion to over £9.1 billion.

This unprecedented increase of 13% comes on top of the £1.5 billion increase over the last 2 years and will continue to support local authorities and schools with the increasing costs they are facing. Every local authority will attract an increase of at least 12% per head of the 2 to 18-year-old population in financial year 2022-23, with some local authorities seeing increases of up to 16% compared to the previous year.

As well as substantial increases in high needs funding for all local authorities, we are also targeting extra support for those authorities in the most financial difficulty and reviewing the overall system of support for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

The SEND Review is considering all elements of the SEND system, and the outcome of that review will be published in the first quarter of 2022 as a green paper for full public consultation.