Deaf Children's Education

It is important that young people with disabilities can access the services they need for a good education. The system for identifying and meeting the needs of all children with special educational needs and disabilities is designed to deliver the right support where it is needed. I am encouraged that the Department for Education is investing more than £25 million in projects to help children with special educational needs access excellent support. This builds on work with charities such as the National Deaf Children's Society, as part of the National Sensory Impairment Partnership, to produce a wide range of support to early years, schools, post-16 providers and local authorities to support children and young people with sensory impairment. 

The high-needs budget for pupils with special educational needs is a record £6 billion. The County Council use the local funding formula to estimate the number of children with special educational needs a school is likely to have. They are required to allocate sufficient funds to schools to enable them to meet the additional cost of pupils with SEN, up to £6,000 per pupil per year. If the additional costs required exceed this amount the local authorities can allocate top-up funding from its high needs budget. 

I welcome that every local authority will see a minimum increase of 0.5 per cent per head in 2018-19 and 1 per cent per head in 2019-20. Underfunded local authorities will receive up to 3 per cent per head gains a year for the next two years and overall, local authorities will gain 4.6 per cent on average on their high needs budgets.