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Funding for SEN (including Personal Budgets)
Overview
In an ideal world, parent carers should never have to concern themselves with how their child/young person’s SEN is funded. It should be that where a child is struggling, provision should be made to help them make progress, regardless of the resources needed.
Unfortunately, with support costing more, and funding often being stretched, we often hear of school’s telling parents that no more support can be given; support is being taken away; other children are ahead of them on the waiting list; or there are just no resources. Of course, lack of resources doesn’t always mean lack of finances (space, equipment, and staff are also resources), and provision doesn’t always require additional finances. But more often than not, it does.
Other queries we receive are around EHC needs assessment requests being refused where schools are not already giving £6,000 of support (or occasionally we hear 20 hours being quoted instead).
As we’ve quoted on other pages, the SEND Code of Practice says schools must:
“…use their best endeavours to make sure that a child with SEN gets the support they need – this means doing everything they can to meet children and young people’s SEN”. (6.2)
Under the Children and Families Act 2014, governing bodies of maintained schools and academy trusts are required to use delegated and earmarked funding to make these best endeavours to meet the needs of children and young people with special educational needs.(Section 49 & 26)
Funding streams are different depending upon whether the school is a mainstream primary school, secondary school, academy or a specialist setting such as a special school or special support centre (SSC) and whether the pupil or student is pre or post 16.
For mainstream schools there are basically 3 types of funding that can be used to help a child with SEN
The basic entitlement per pupil – sometimes referred to as the Age Weighted Pupil Unit (AWPU) and Element 1
Additional Support Funding – The school’s notional SEN budget, sometimes referred to as Element 2
Top-up funding – sometimes referred to as an Individually Assigned Resource (IAR) or Element 3
Personal Budgets
A personal budget is an amount of money identified by your local authority. It’s used to deliver parts of the provision set out in your child’s / your Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP).
For more information about Funding in the different schools as well as Personal Budgets, see below.
Local Information, Guidance and Policies
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SENDIAS Factsheets:
Detailed Information and Guidance
Template Letter – Asking the LA about it’s Delegated Funding
Guidance and template letter by IPSEA to ask the LA about what is available in your area and the funding it delegates to your child’s nursery, school or college.
Further Information
- The School and Early Years Finance and Childcare (Provision of Information About Young Children) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2024 currently set out how funding is allocated to schools and other settings. Note that these are issued every year, so check for the latest regulations.
- Funding for different types of schools and settings – GOV.UK