Sir Nicholas Soames: To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the (a) initial and (b) additional allocated budgets for special needs provision in West Sussex schools have been in each of the last three years.

Nadhim Zahawi, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Children and Families: Local authorities are required to provide schools with sufficient funds to enable mainstream schools to meet the additional cost of pupils with special educational needs (SEN) and disabilities, up to the value of £6,000 per pupil. This funding comes from the schools’ block of the dedicated schools grant.

When the costs of additional support required for a pupil with SEN exceed £6,000, the local authority should also allocate additional top-up funding to cover the excess costs. This top-up funding, and all funding for special schools comes from the local authority’s high needs budget.

West Sussex have received the following amounts in the schools and high needs blocks in the last three years:

On 17 December 2018, we announced an additional £250 million in high needs funding across the current financial year and the next. The additional allocation for West Sussex was £1.8 million for 2018 to 2019. This is included in the figures above.

Hansard

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