Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of budgets allocated to Special Educational Needs in England in each of the last five years since 1 April 2017.

In response to the department's assessment of the extra demands on the high needs budget, which covers children and young people with more complex special educational needs (SEN), there have been increases to high needs funding allocations to local authorities in England in the last five years, as shown in the table below. Furthermore, the department was able to announce last December that overall high needs funding for children and young people with complex needs is increasing in this financial year by £1 billion to over £9 billion. This includes a small amount of funding that is not allocated to local authorities.

Local authorities have also increased the notional amounts allocated to mainstream schools for their pupils with lower level SEN, and to meet costs up to £6,000 per pupil for those with high needs, and these are also included in the table below.