Increase funding for special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) education

I would like the Government to increase funding for SEND education, so that local authorities can provide more school places for children with SEND. Parents shouldn’t have to fight to get their child the education they need.

I believe there is a national crisis regarding SEND school places. SEND education needs more funding so that local authorities are able to build more specialist SEND schools. There are so many families nationally with children that have no specialist SEND schools locally. This isn’t something new, This is a crisis that’s been going on for many years & there’s not enough funding in many areas. I believe that the Government need to look into this and make more funds available to help with SEND Education, so families that have children with special needs/disabilities are able to get a specialist school setting for their children they deserve without having to fight for a place.

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 £365 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.

Furthermore, 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.