To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they will take further to the recent survey of local authorities in England which found that since 2014 approximately £400 million has been diverted from mainstream education budgets in order to pay for special needs education.
My Lords, we allow transfers of up to 0.5% from local authorities’ mainstream school budgets to pay for special needs education. This requires agreement from the local schools forum. Larger transfers must be approved by the Secretary of State. Next year we will increase high needs funding by £780 million. This increase in a single year should be compared with the reported £73 million that local authorities transferred from mainstream schools to high needs in 2018-19.
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