Education

On 6 September 2019 I announced a review into special educational needs and disability (SEND) and the support available to children and young people. This will be a cross-Government review and is part of Government’s commitment to ensure that every child receives the best start in life, including those who need additional support because they have a special educational need or disability.

In 2014, the Government introduced significant, widely supported, reforms to improve and join up the support that children and young people with SEND receive. It is now time to review how that is working, make sure that we are supporting children and young people to reach their potential, and to take account of the lived experience of children and young people with SEND and of their parents. The review is about understanding what is happening across England for children, young people and their families and making sure money is being spent fairly, efficiently and effectively, and that the support available to children and young people is sustainable in future.

The review will look at:

the evidence on how the system can provide the highest quality support that enables children and young people with SEND to thrive and prepare for adulthood, including employment:

better helping parents to make decisions about what kind of support will be best for their child;

making sure support in different local areas is consistent, and that high-quality support is available across the country:

how we strike the right balance of state-funded provision across inclusive mainstream and specialist places;

aligning incentives and accountability for schools, colleges and local authorities to make sure they provide the best possible support for children and young people with SEND;

understanding what is causing the demand for education, health and care plans and;

ensuring that public money is spent in an efficient, effective and sustainable manner, placing a premium on securing high quality outcomes for those children and young people who need additional support.

The review will inform and support the Government commitment to revise and update the SEND Code of Practice before the end of 2020.

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Today I am confirming detailed aspects of schools and high needs funding arrangements for 2020-21. This follows a statement by the Secretary of State for Education on 3 September, which confirmed to Parliament that the funding for schools and high needs will, compared to 2019-20, rise by £2.6 billion for 2020-21, £4.8 billion for 2021-22, and £7.1 billion for 2022-23.

In 2020-21, this funding will be distributed using the schools and high needs national funding formulae (NFF). We will be publishing provisional NFF allocations at local authority and school level in October, including local authorities’ final primary and secondary units of funding for the schools block. Alongside this, in the usual way, we will publish technical documents setting out the detail underpinning the formulae. We will then publish final schools and high needs allocations for local authorities in the dedicated schools grant (DSG) in December.

The schools NFF for 2020-21 will continue to have the same factors as at present, and we will continue to implement the formula to address historic underfunding and move to a system where funding is based on need. The key aspects of the formula for 2020-21 are:

The minimum per pupil funding levels will be set at £3,750 for primary schools and £5,000 for secondary schools. The following year, in 2021-22, the primary minimum level will rise to £4,000.

The funding floor will be set at 1.84% per pupil, in line with the forecast GDP deflator, to protect per pupil allocations for all schools in real terms. This minimum increase in 2020-21 allocations will be based on the individual school’s NFF allocation in 2019-20.

Schools that are attracting their core NFF allocations will benefit from an increase of 4% to the formula’s core factors.

There will be no gains cap in the NFF, unlike the previous two years, so that all schools attract their full core allocations under the formula.

As previously set out, we will make a technical change to the mobility factor so that it allocates this funding using a formulaic approach, rather than on the basis of historic spend.

Growth funding will be based on the same methodology as this year, with the same transitional protection ensuring that no authority whose growth funding is unwinding will lose more than 0.5% of its 2019-20 schools block allocation.