Fund more specialist school places for children with special educational needs

The lack of spaces in specialist schools in parts of the country like the North East is affecting so many vulnerable children and their families. Specialist schools say they’re full, how can the authorities not think something is seriously wrong and insist these children go to mainstream school?

The Government is not funding enough specialist schools provision. It must fix the broken education system and the severe lack of special needs teachers, teaching assistants and schools. These children need our help and the support of a government that understands its duty of care to them. Specialist schools up and down this country are overworked, understaffed and full, and children are unable to receive the education and support they so desperately need and deserve.

The £2.6 billion investment in high needs provision announced in October 2022 represents a significant, transformational investment in new high needs provision, and will help fulfil the government’s 2019 manifesto commitment to deliver additional places for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) or who require alternative provision (AP).

As part of this funding commitment, in March 2022, we announced High Needs Provision Capital Allocations amounting to over £1.4 billion of new investment. This funding is to support local authorities (LAs) to deliver new places for academic years 2023/24 and 2024/25 and improve existing provision for children and young people with SEND or who require AP.

This funding follows investment of £300 million in financial year 2021-22 and £365m between 2018 and 2021.

LAs in the North East have received allocations totalling £11.7 million in 2021-22, £25.6 million in 2022-23 and £31.1 million in 2023-24. They also received £12.5 million between 2018 and 2021.

High Needs Provision Capital Allocations for 2021 to 2024 are published at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/high-needs-provision-capital-allocations. SEND provision capital funding allocations for 2018 to 2021 are published at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/send-provision-capital-funding-for-pupils-with-ehc-plans.

Starting from Summer 2023 we will, for the first time, be collecting data from LAs on available capacity in special schools, SEN units and resourced provision, along with corresponding forecasts of demand for these places. This data will help the Department to more effectively support LAs to fulfil their statutory duty to provide sufficient specialist places.