Caroline Lucas – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Caroline Lucas on 2016-03-24.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make it her policy to ring-fence special educational needs funding as part of her Department’s new national funding formula.

Mr Sam Gyimah

We are currently consulting on arrangements for new national formulae for schools and high needs funding (funding for pupils with high cost Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND)). Both funding streams, along with early years funding, make up the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG), which is ring-fenced so that local authorities can only spend it on specified elements of education. The DSG will continue to be ring-fenced when the national funding formulae are in place. We have also protected the high needs budget in this Parliament and the previous one. We recently added £92.5 million to the 2016-17 allocations.