Mainstream SEND Funding: A simple explainer, another consultation, and why it really matters

While the dust from new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham’s reshuffle begins to settle at the Department for Education, there are still live consultations going on. We’ll soon find out what Lucy Powell makes of it all, and perhaps Matt’s article on one of them— Upfront Mainstream SEND Funding—will help with a simple funding explainer.

Contents

The last few months have felt like a never-ending series of SEND consultations. The main SEND proposals in the Schools White Paper. The government’s proposals for Education Other Than At School (EOTAS), which also shines an ominous light on what they have in mind for SEND as a whole.

And, just as the school year wraps up, here’s another one: “upfront funding for mainstream schools: creating a ‘local SEND inclusion formula.’”

If you’ve had your fill of SEND consultations by now, no one would blame you. But like the EOTAS consultation, this funding one is worth looking at and responding to if you can muster up the energy.

The consultation

You can find the Department for Education (DfE) consultation documents here. The main document isn’t that long, but there’s a shorter and simpler version explicitly created for parent carers here. There are no accessible versions. The DfE want responses by 18^th September.

The DfE says that this consultation is for local authorities, mainstream schools, “representatives of school funding and finance arrangements,” and parent carers. But if you work in the special school or AP sector, then you definitely need to pay attention too.

There are six questions, plus an “are there any other comments you want to make?” catch-all.

If implemented—and they almost certainly will be—the proposals under consultation would start in April 2027 – but would require participating LAs and schools to do a lot of prep work before then.

So what’s a ‘local SEND inclusion formula,’ and what difference would it make?

Before getting there, here’s a quick explainer on how mainstream SEND funding is supposed to work right now.

Background: Mainstream SEND Funding basics

SEND funding is ridiculously complicated. That’s partly a design thing, exacerbated by the differences between academies and LA-maintained schools. But it’s also an implementation thing. Each LA has its own way of implementing SEND funding, and that contributes to a huge postcode lottery.

In simple terms, there are three elements to mainstream SEND funding:

Element 1: this is the core per-pupil funding that each mainstream school receives, regardless of whether a pupil has SEND or not. Most pupils with SEND will need more support than Element 1 can fund.
Element 2: like Element 1, this comes from the core school budget. When mainstream school funding is passed from the DfE to LAs to maintained schools, or from the DfE to the LA to the DfE to academy trusts, some of it is designated as a ‘notional SEN’ budget.

“Notional” is exactly it: this isn’t formally ring-fenced SEND funding, and it doesn’t have to be assigned to individual pupils. But when a school or trust goes cap-in-hand to the LA for more SEND funding to support an individual pupil, the LA will expect them to show how they’ve used it for that pupil.

DfE guidance says, “mainstream schools’ core budgets include [Element 2] funding for pupils with SEND whose support costs are below £6,000 per year. Schools are expected to meet these costs from their own budgets, up to this threshold.”

This £6,000 threshold – guidance, not codified law – is at the core of the new proposal.

Element 3: this is often referred to as ‘top-up’ funding. It comes from a funding pot called the High Needs Block, which is provided by the DfE to LAs. Each LA has its own method for allocating it. This funding is supposed to ‘follow’ the individual child, not a cohort.

The vast majority of pupils whose provision has to be funded from Element 3 will have an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP), but it’s not mandatory.

Most pupils with SEND educated in mainstream schools are funded through Elements 1 and 2 only.

Most pupils with EHCPs in mainstream schools will be funded through Elements 1, 2 and 3 but in most cases, Elements 1 and 2 (i.e. the school’s core budget) will be the main source of funding.

If all of that’s clear to you, then step away and seek professional help immediately. That’s the theory – in practice, it’s an absolute mess.

To add to the “fun”, the DfE’s ‘local SEND inclusion formula’ proposal will make this even messier but—in theory—only in the short term.

The Local SEND Inclusion Formula

It probably won’t have escaped your attention that the DfE wants more pupils with SEND educated in their local mainstream school and more pupils receiving support earlier.

The DfE believes the current funding system makes it hard for that to happen, and they’ve identified the £6,000 threshold for high-needs support as part of that problem.

This £6,000 threshold was dreamt up by a consultant in 2009, and implemented in 2013. After many years of inflation, £6,000 doesn’t fund nearly as much support now as it did back then.

In practice, that’s meant schools and trusts have ended up going to the LA for extra funding (the Element 3 bit) much more than they used to. And that, in turn, has driven a lot of the increase in EHCPs. According to DfE data and our own FOI investigations, it’s schools who submit most of the requests for EHC needs assessments, not families.

Securing an EHCP takes time and bureaucratic effort, which in turn, delays the point at which mainstream pupils get the support they need, their needs become more entrenched, and round and round and down we go. The DfE wants the ‘local SEND inclusion formula’ to help break this vicious circle, alongside the other support it’s decanting into mainstream schools: the Experts at Hand service and the Inclusive Mainstream Fund.

It’s also pretty clear that the DfE also wants to disrupt a system where high-needs funding in mainstream is linked to the needs individual pupils. It thinks mainstream schools can better weave SEND magic if funding flows to cohorts of pupils and clusters of schools instead.

So how would the formula work?

Formulating on the fly

At a very simple level, the ‘local SEND inclusion formula’ would carve out a chunk of high-needs funding—the pot that the LA holds and dishes out, mostly on a per-pupil basis—and distribute it directly to mainstream schools and academy trusts, presumably on a cohort and cluster basis.

It’s called a ‘formula,’ because it’ll involve the LA calculating things: how much to raise the £6,000 threshold by, and deciding what things to consider when allocating this funding to each school or trust.

As policy consultations go, this looks…under-developed.

A polite way to describe it would be a rapid-prototype large-scale pilot scheme, freeing LAs and mainstream schools to “innovate”, in ways that could make future SEND reforms more likely to work.

A less polite way to describe it would be an idea-starved department asking people to toss billions of pounds of excrement against a wall and seeing what sticks, in ways that might imperil outcomes for pupils at the individual level.

Opt in, opt out.. but the law has not changed

The first thing to bear in mind is that this is a voluntary opt-in scheme. If LAs want in, they have to express their interest to the DfE by the 18^th September, and make a formal application by the end of October. But LAs don’t have to take part if they don’t want to.

The second thing to bear in mind is that if your LA decides to opt in, then its legal obligations remain completely unchanged. Adopting a local SEND inclusion formula will not absolve the LA of its statutory responsibilities to consider EHC needs assessment requests, to consider issuing EHCPs, or to make SEND provision in EHCPs.

The third thing to bear in mind is that participating LAs will be ‘growing their own’ local SEND inclusion formula. LAs will have to run their proposals past their local Schools Forum (a consultative body made up of school leaders), and presumably past their own executive and councillors. Participating LAs will definitely have to run their formula proposals past the DfE, and the LA proposal won’t go ahead unless the DfE says so.

But if the DfE plan proceeds, each LA will have its own formula, so there’ll be dozens of different formulas across the country.

That’s great if you’re a policy wonk who wants variety in their data. But it’ll be a complete nightmare if you’re a mainstream school leader with pupils from different LAs on your roll.

The fourth thing to bear in mind is that creating a new local SEND inclusion formula is an inherently bureaucratic exercise. Designing, co-ordinating, approving and implementing a formula like this will chew up the time of thousands of people. And not just the formula itself, but other local SEND funding structures would need to be re-designed too: things like high-needs banding systems, for example.

But the most important thing to bear in mind is this: these proposals would just divide up the SEND funding pie differently, they won’t make it bigger.

If all goes well, then it might mean the pie tastes better, and it might mean the pie hits the stomach quicker. But this formula won’t increase the size of the pie: there’s no guarantee at all that there’ll be enough for everyone, and many settings are already on starvation rations as it is.

Where’s the evidence? (again)

These are supposed to be evidence-driven SEND reforms. At this stage, you might be wondering what evidence there is to show how much money mainstream schools spend on SEND now, and how delegating more funding to them will improve things.

The starting point isn’t great. At strategic policy level, no one knows how much money mainstream schools and trusts currently spend on SEND from their core budgets. No one. At ground level, governors and trustees are supposed to hold schools and trusts to account for SEND spending, but that’s it.

The local SEND inclusion formula will not be tied to the needs of individual pupils. This is currently very much in vogue amongst policy wonks and consultants: they lean on international research (including Finland) that suggests rates of SEND identification (and offered provision) tend to fall when a government moves to a census—or cohort—based SEND funding model.

Much of this research is dated. It has very little to say about how this change affects pupil outcomes, and its evidence is taken from education systems that differ substantially from England’s.

Will it work in England? This local SEND inclusion formula looks like an improvised experiment to find that out.

In their local SEND inclusion formula consultation guide for families, the DfE says “all this funding will go to schools – none will be held elsewhere.”

That’s probably true, but it’s also not exactly the right question. How will schools and trusts actually deploy the funding they get through this formula? Given the wider financial pressures that mainstream schools face, what assurance can anyone have that the formula’s funding will be spent on SEND provision?

And who’s checking, given that no-one at the top is really checking now?

The consultation is completely silent on this. It’s also completely silent on the impact faced by special schools and alternative provision.

Promoted

Risky business

The local SEND inclusion formula will take a chunk of funding from the LA’s High Needs Block and give it to mainstream schools to play with. But even after that’s done, many mainstream schools will still need to tap up the LA’s High Needs Block for ‘top-up’ funding.

Loads of settings need funding from the High Needs Block: mainstream schools, special schools, post-16 education, and bespoke provision. If a big chunk of the High Needs Block is diverted exclusively for mainstream use—and that’s the plan here—then there is a big risk that things get financially tighter for non-mainstream settings.

Unlike mainstream schools, special schools are entirely funded from the LA’s High Needs Block. And the High Needs Block is already in financial meltdown in almost every LA in the country.

How does a participating LA ensure that these settings get the resources they need, particularly special schools, which have no other big funding pots to tap if they’re budget-starved?

LAs submitted local area SEND reform plans to the DfE last month. These plans won’t have answers to this question, because this formula proposal hadn’t emerged by then. So do LAs have to revise these plans, or not?

The DfE has assured everyone that “schools will experience a smooth funding transition throughout these arrangements and the government will hold local authorities to account on this.”

It’s not remotely clear how the DfE can credibly promise that schools will experience a “smooth funding transition”, particularly when the status quo is chaos incarnate.

There are no further details on how the government would hold individual LAs to account if rapid re-assembly of local funding arrangements goes wrong and it causes rapid disassembly of effective SEND provision at local level.

It’s also not clear at all how the DfE would judge, or even could judge, which of the new funding formulae delivered effective or ineffective outcomes.

That’ll be one of the most important things to ask in the consultation. If the yardstick involves proper measurement of the speed and quality of mainstream SEND provision, and precise data on the impact that this change has made to children and young people, then great.

But if it involves SEND system leaders’ favourite proxies for these things – fewer EHCPs, more pupils in mainstream, lower deficits, and superficial assessment of exclusions data – then it won’t be good.

Below are all the links for live consultations, including this Upfront Funding. For more, check out our SEND Politics page

Live SEND-related Consultation Links:

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Matt Keer

Matt (he/him) has two deaf children. He has over 20 years of experience grappling with the SEND system as a parent, and he’s seen the best and the worst that the SEND system offers.
Matt specialises in SEND stats, data analysis, and in-depth investigations of policies. He has given evidence to several Parliamentary Select Committee inquiries, and his articles for SNJ on SEND funding, local government policy, and the SENDIST Tribunal have been quoted in Select Committee inquiry reports and national media.

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