Asked by: Kevin Hollinrake (Conservative - Thirsk and Malton)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate her Department has made of the cost of school transport for SEND children in each of the last five years.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell
The department knows that delivering home-to-school travel can be very challenging for local authorities and that costs have increased steeply over recent years. In particular, challenges within the wider special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) system have created significant pressure on home-to-school travel. The SEND system inherited by the government has been failing to meet the needs of children and families for far too long, with a lack of early intervention and support in mainstream schools and unsustainable strain on local government finances. The department is grateful to local authorities for ensuring that transport is available for eligible children in the face of significant challenge.
Section 251 of the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009 requires local authorities to submit information about their education expenditure, including expenditure on home-to-school travel. The information collected from local authorities is published on GOV.UK. Further details are available at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/la-and-school-expenditure/2023-24.
Asked by: Al Pinkerton (Liberal Democrat - Surrey Heath)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of increasing public expenditure on schools in Surrey Heath constituency.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell
Across the spending review, core schools funding, including special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) investment, will increase from £65.3 billion in the 2025/26 financial year (including the additional funding announced in May 2025) to £69.5 billion by the 2028/29 financial year. Taken together, this grows per-pupil spending over this spending review period by 2.7% in real terms. Decisions on how that funding will be allocated across mainstream schools and high needs will be taken in due course.
The national funding formula (NFF) allocates funding for schools to local authorities based on school and pupil characteristics. The government will be reviewing the operation of the schools NFF for 2026/27 and future years. The funding impact on individual local authorities will therefore also depend on the outcome of this review. This will be announced later in the year.
Surrey is the local authority responsible for allocating funding in Surrey Heath constituency. Through the dedicated schools grant (DSG), Surrey is receiving £895.8 million for mainstream schools in the 2025/26 financial year. This represents an increase of 2.2% per pupil compared to the 2024/25 financial year, excluding growth and falling rolls funding. On top of that, schools are also receiving additional funding for National Insurance contributions increases, as well as to support with staff pay rises.
Asked by: Lord Agnew of Oulton (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what was the total expenditure by local-authority-maintained schools and academies in England on agency supply teachers in the financial years (1) 2023–24, and (2) 2024–25.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Supply teachers perform a valuable role and the department is grateful for their important contribution to schools across the country.
Schools and local authorities are responsible for the recruitment of their supply teachers.
In the 2023/24 financial year, local authority-maintained schools spent approximately £522 million on agency supply teaching staff. In the 2023/24 academic year, academies spent approximately £898 million on agency supply teaching staff (financial returns data for academies is aligned with academic years). There is no data available for the 2024/25 academic or financial years. This data is from published school financial returns. Note that the two figures cannot be added together directly, due to the different time periods covered and the risk of double counting spend for maintained schools who convert to academy status.
Asked by: Munira Wilson (Liberal Democrat - Twickenham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much of the increase to the core schools budget for 2025-26 and 2026-27 is expected to be spent by schools in covering part of the (a) recent teacher pay rise and (b) National Insurance contribution increase.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell
The department is providing £1.4 billion to support schools with their increases to employer National Insurance contributions and staff pay awards in the 2025/26 financial year. Following the spring Spending Review, this level of funding will continue, and we announced additional funding that will take core school budgets to £65.9 billion by the 2028/29 financial year. Schools have autonomy over how they use their core funding to best meet their priorities, including any decisions on staffing.
More information on core funding allocations for 2026/27 will be announced in the autumn, as part of the usual national funding formulae process. Costs such as pay for future years are currently uncertain and subject to the outcomes of separate pay processes.
Asked by: Ben Obese-Jecty (Conservative - Huntingdon)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much the Government has spent on contracts with temporary teaching agencies for staff at schools in Huntingdon constituency since 5 July 2024.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell
Supply teachers make an important contribution to the smooth running of schools across the country by filling posts on a temporary basis and covering teacher absences.
Schools and local authorities are responsible for the recruitment of their supply teachers and there are currently various approaches to providing supply teachers, including using agencies. Therefore, the department does not hold contracts with temporary agencies for staff at schools and does not hold the data requested.
The department collects financial data from schools across England through the Consistent Financial Reporting framework for local authority maintained schools, and through the Academy Accounts Return for academies and multi-academy trusts. The Financial Benchmarking and Insights Tool reports on school and academy spend on supply teaching, including expenditure on agency supply teaching staff. This includes “costs paid to an agency for teaching staff that have been brought in to cover teacher absence”. The Tool can be accessed here: https://financial-benchmarking-and-insights-tool.education.gov.uk/data-sources.
Asked by: Ben Obese-Jecty (Conservative - Huntingdon)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 21 May 2025 to Question 52032 on Special Educational Needs: Finance, what information her Department holds on the amount of additional funding per pupil above £6,000 that was provided by Cambridgeshire County Council for pupils in mainstream schools in each of the last five years.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell
The average additional high needs top-up funding amounts per pupil, covering the costs of pupils with special educational needs in Cambridgeshire mainstream maintained schools and academies, in excess of £6,000 per annum, are set out in the table below. This is from the latest available annual actual expenditure returns provided to the department by Cambridgeshire County Council, and the school census data. In this period, the number of children attracting top-up funding has grown from 1,600 to 2,900. As a result, it is likely that the severity of needs being addressed has changed over the period.
Average top-up funding expenditure per pupil in Cambridgeshire mainstream schools | Financial year 2019/20 | Financial year 2020/21 | Financial year 2021/22 | Financial year 2022/23 | Financial year 2023/24 |
Spend per pupil identified by schools as attracting high needs top-up funding | £10,300 | £8,700 | £8,900 | £8,900 | £9,100 |
To note:
Asked by: Rupert Lowe (Independent - Great Yarmouth)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the average cost per pupil was of providing English as an Additional Language support in state schools in the most recent academic year.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell
Each year, schools receive core funding from the department to cover their expenditures, which includes teacher salaries, support staff, school resources, and other expenses. The funding schools receive is not ringfenced for any specific form of expenditure and it is for each school to determine how this money will be best used to support their individual children.
The overall core schools budget (CSB) is increasing by £3.2 billion in 2025/26, meaning the CSB will total over £64.8 billion, compared to almost £61.6 billion in 2024/25.
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Reform UK - Romford)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will require campaign organisations that provide teaching materials to disclose data on (a) reach, (b) school uptake and (c) expenditure on education initiatives.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell
Schools are subject to statutory duties regarding political impartiality under section 406 and 407 of the Equality Act 1996. This means schools must not promote partisan political views and should ensure that pupils are provided with a balanced treatment of political issues. In 2022 the department published comprehensive guidance to support schools to meet their duties on political impartiality: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/political-impartiality-in-schools/political-impartiality-in-schools#using-external-agencies.
This includes sections on choosing resources and working with external organisations.
The department does not approve or monitor externally produced resources or track their distribution. We have also not met or corresponded with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and do not fund them.
If a parent is concerned about a school using politically partial, inaccurate or inappropriate resources, they should raise the matter with the school immediately and, if necessary, escalate it through the school’s publish complaints process: https://www.gov.uk/complain-about-school.
Asked by: Cat Eccles (Labour - Stourbridge)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of trends in the level of differences in funding per child between SEN children educated in state schools and those educated in privately owned institutions.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell
This government’s ambition is that all children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) receive the right support to succeed in their education and as they move into adult life.
From the 2018/19 financial year to 2023/24, the most recent year for which information is available, the average per-pupil expenditure on pupils with an education, health and care (EHC) plan in maintained special schools and special academies on the one hand, and non-maintained and independent special schools on the other, are set out in the tables below:
Per-pupil expenditure: Cash values (rounded) as at the time, not adjusted for inflation | ||||||
| 2018/19 | 2019/20 | 2020/21 | 2021/22 | 2022/23 | 2023/24 |
Maintained special schools and special academies | £20,000 | £21,000 | £22,000 | £23,000 | £24,000 | £26,000 |
Non-maintained and independent special schools | £52,000 | £54,000 | £54,000 | £57,000 | £62,000 | £63,000 |
To note:
1. Per-pupil expenditure is the average calculated from the national expenditure on place and top-up funding for the school types, per pupil with an EHC plan.
2. For maintained special schools and special academies the calculation uses the place funding rate of £10,000 per place plus the average top-up funding expenditure. by local authorities on those schools as recorded in their section 251 outturn data, per pupil as recorded in the January schools census.
3. For non-maintained and independent special schools the department has calculated the total expenditure from the £10,000 per-place funding allocated to non-maintained special schools and the total top-up funding expenditure by local authorities on those schools as recorded in their section 251 outturn data, per pupil with an EHC plan as recorded in our SEN2 data collection.
4. From 2023, the data collection for SEN2 changed from aggregated figures at local authority level, to a person-level collection. This has been a major change in approach and care should be taken with comparisons across this period because expenditure per pupil changes between 2021/22 and 2022/23 may include an effect from the EHC plan data collection methodology change.
The per-pupil expenditure amounts for children with EHC plans as set out in the table above are averages of a wide range of per-pupil funding levels that are different depending on the needs of the child and school they attend. It is the relevant local authority’s responsibility to decide how to allocate that funding and how much to allocate to each school.
Following the Autumn Budget 2024, the department is providing an increase of £1 billion for high needs budgets in England in the 2025/26 financial year. This brings total high needs funding for children and young people with complex SEND to over £12 billion. Of that total, Dudley Council is being allocated over £62 million through the high needs funding block of the dedicated schools grant (DSG), an increase of £5.4 million on their 2024/25 DSG high needs block, calculated using the high needs national funding formula.
Asked by: Cat Eccles (Labour - Stourbridge)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she has made an assessment of the merits of increasing the funding per-pupil for children with an Education, Health and Care Plan.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell
This government’s ambition is that all children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) receive the right support to succeed in their education and as they move into adult life.
From the 2018/19 financial year to 2023/24, the most recent year for which information is available, the average per-pupil expenditure on pupils with an education, health and care (EHC) plan in maintained special schools and special academies on the one hand, and non-maintained and independent special schools on the other, are set out in the tables below:
Per-pupil expenditure: Cash values (rounded) as at the time, not adjusted for inflation | ||||||
| 2018/19 | 2019/20 | 2020/21 | 2021/22 | 2022/23 | 2023/24 |
Maintained special schools and special academies | £20,000 | £21,000 | £22,000 | £23,000 | £24,000 | £26,000 |
Non-maintained and independent special schools | £52,000 | £54,000 | £54,000 | £57,000 | £62,000 | £63,000 |
To note:
1. Per-pupil expenditure is the average calculated from the national expenditure on place and top-up funding for the school types, per pupil with an EHC plan.
2. For maintained special schools and special academies the calculation uses the place funding rate of £10,000 per place plus the average top-up funding expenditure. by local authorities on those schools as recorded in their section 251 outturn data, per pupil as recorded in the January schools census.
3. For non-maintained and independent special schools the department has calculated the total expenditure from the £10,000 per-place funding allocated to non-maintained special schools and the total top-up funding expenditure by local authorities on those schools as recorded in their section 251 outturn data, per pupil with an EHC plan as recorded in our SEN2 data collection.
4. From 2023, the data collection for SEN2 changed from aggregated figures at local authority level, to a person-level collection. This has been a major change in approach and care should be taken with comparisons across this period because expenditure per pupil changes between 2021/22 and 2022/23 may include an effect from the EHC plan data collection methodology change.
The per-pupil expenditure amounts for children with EHC plans as set out in the table above are averages of a wide range of per-pupil funding levels that are different depending on the needs of the child and school they attend. It is the relevant local authority’s responsibility to decide how to allocate that funding and how much to allocate to each school.
Following the Autumn Budget 2024, the department is providing an increase of £1 billion for high needs budgets in England in the 2025/26 financial year. This brings total high needs funding for children and young people with complex SEND to over £12 billion. Of that total, Dudley Council is being allocated over £62 million through the high needs funding block of the dedicated schools grant (DSG), an increase of £5.4 million on their 2024/25 DSG high needs block, calculated using the high needs national funding formula.