In our final look at the SEND Inquiry report, we’re taking a longer look at what it says about funding—one of the central and thorniest causes of the SEND crisis.
In their inquiry report, the Education Committee tackle the mounting horrors of SEND funding. This isn’t a fun or easy subject, but it’s safe to say SEND finances are a raging tyre-fire that’s bad for both schools and local authorities. Because of that, the dysfunctionality of SEND funding is bad for our kids. To add to the fun, things are on track to get worse.
If you want some background on how SEND funding works (if we can describe it as working), then we have some background articles here, here and here.
Like many official bodies, the Committee describes the current SEND funding model as “unsustainable.” They try to tackle the problem in two parts:
- The funding that’s allocated directly to mainstream schools
- The ‘high-needs’ funding that’s allocated by local authorities to schools for ‘high-needs’ SEND.
For delegated school funding, the Committee’s conclusion is blunt:
“It is clear that the current levels of funding provided to schools and multi-academy trusts are inadequate to support the effective inclusion of pupils with SEND.”
That’s reasonable from the evidence they were given. But it’s also reasonable to point out that nationally, no one really knows how much of the £45+ billion of education funding delegated to mainstream schools and academy trusts last year, was actually spent on SEND provision that should “ordinarily be available”.
The notional SEND budget
There’s a notional (and much-abused) £6,000 threshold that most LAs require a school to allocate from its ‘notional’ budget before the LA will open up its high-needs coffers. This £6,000 threshold was originally set by a pimply consultant back in 2009: thanks to inflation, £6,000 today will only pay for a fraction of what it did back then.
The DfE has been dancing around this issue for years, and the Education Committee aren’t happy about it:
“The Department cannot reasonably expect inclusive education to be realised without a significant increase in investment. Adequate and sustained resourcing is essential to ensure that mainstream schools, multi-academy trusts and teaching staff are properly equipped to be inclusive. However, the Government does not appear to have a realistic understanding of the scale of investment required to deliver a genuinely inclusive education system. Without acknowledging and addressing the true level of resource needed, efforts to improve outcomes for pupils with SEND risk falling short.”
Oof. So what do they recommend?
“The current £6,000 notional threshold is outdated and inadequate. It must be automatically uprated each year in line with inflation to prevent further erosion of support for pupils with SEND. This is a necessary correction to address years of chronic underfunding. This funding should also be ringfenced to ensure it is used exclusively for supporting pupils with SEND and to improve the transparency and accountability of the resources schools and multi-academy trusts are committing to deliver inclusivity.”
This would mean that schools would have to fund more–potentially a lot more–SEND support from their own budget before bothering the LA. And schools and academy trusts will be expected to show how they’ve used that funding, although it’s not clear how.
But ultimately, the Education Committee expects the DfE to redesign this bit of SEND funding completely, without giving too much of a clue how:
“However, these measures alone will not be enough to create the change desperately needed in this failing system. The Department must set a clear trajectory towards a more sustainable and equitable funding model that is informed by, and able to deliver, the Department’s definition of inclusive mainstream education.”
High needs SEND funding
What about the other main part of the SEND funding system, the High Needs Block? This Block funds special schools entirely and provides top-up SEND funding for mainstream too. It’s in a rapidly advancing state of meltdown, and if left unchecked, might pull a few local authorities down with it.
“The High Needs Block should be refocused to enable and incentivise earlier intervention. Currently, a significant proportion of this funding is directed towards supporting high-cost, specialist provision once needs have escalated. While such provision is vital for some, a more preventative approach is needed to reduce long-term need and improve outcomes. Redirecting a greater share of High Needs funding towards early identification and support within mainstream settings and through multi-agency services will help address emerging needs and ensure that good support is put in place at the outset.”
OK, fine. Maybe. But how does the DfE ‘refocus’ the High Needs Block onto early intervention, when it’s the sole source of funding for specialist SEND provision, and when the Committee is also saying that there’s not enough of that? Put more bluntly, how do you help future kids with SEND get help earlier, without shafting the life chances of the present kids with SEND, many of whom have already been shafted?
There’s not a clear answer here. But there is an important conclusion: there are SEND system leaders and consultants—particularly on the finance side—who think SEND is completely erasable across the board if you intervene early enough. That kids with steady, profound, lifelong disabilities can have all the costly SEND “intervened” out of them quickly.
That’s obviously cack, and the Committee are having none of it:
“…the Department [for Education] must recognise that while early intervention plays a crucial role in supporting children with disabilities, it is not a solution for all needs. Some children will require consistent, long-term support throughout their lives. Where this is the case, it is essential that adequate and sustained funding and resources are in place to ensure these children receive the ongoing support they need to thrive.”
Key Content
Tackling crippling SEND deficits
The other main funding headache bedevilling SEND is what to do about the very large education funding deficits that councils have built up over the last few years. In almost all cases, this is because LAs have spent more funding on high-needs SEND than they’ve been given by Whitehall.
We estimate that the aggregate education funding deficit held across all councils at the end of March 2025 was around £3.8-3.9 billion. It’s continuing to grow, and it’s continuing to drive all sorts of LA skulduggery at the individual case level. This deficit is much bigger than the DfE was expecting even a few months ago, and while a really nasty accounting cliff-edge (the statutory override) has now been pushed back, this is a problem that’s only getting worse.
So what does the Committee recommend?
“We believe that a reset of local authority finances through a partial write-off of SEND-related deficits could provide a necessary step towards long-term stability.”
OK, but how “partial” is partial, and how do you decide who gets the write-off? It’s not clear, but they clearly want to avoid some of the demand-suppression thinking that’s dominated the Safety Valve and Delivering Better Value SEND financial intervention schemes.
“Reducing deficits is essential to achieving long-term financial sustainability: however, this cannot be done at the expense of local authorities fulfilling their legal obligations to children and young people with SEND. Any permanent solution must involve coordinated, cross-departmental action between the Department for Education, HM Treasury, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to address the systemic funding challenges within local government.”
The Committee wants to see an answer to this question in the upcoming White Paper. But like a lot of the funding part of this report, there aren’t a lot of crisp and clear recommendations, and there’s some things they’ve left out entirely: place funding for state special schools, for example.
Some further quotes
Even though we’ve taken three posts to go through the main parts, there are still parts we haven’t examined. Here are a couple more quotes:
What’s your view of the report? Let us know.
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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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