HC Deb 02 April 2003 vol 402 c731W
Mr. Norman

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills (1) what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the system of education grant distribution in recognising the additional costs associated with educational provision for children with special needs; [105867]

(2) what assessment he has made of the extent to which additional financial support provided to (a) local authorities and (b) primary and secondary schools reflects the costs of providing for children recognised as being on the autistic spectrum. [105863]

Mr. Miliband

The new system for distributing education grant is known as Education Formula Spending Shares. The distribution formula recognises the additional costs associated with educational provision for children with special needs in two ways. Firstly there is an uplift of £1,300 in the under five, primary and secondary formulae for pupils with additional educational needs. This draws on evidence from research by PricewaterhouseCoopers (a copy has been placed in the Library) on the costs schools face for pupils with additional educational needs. Secondly, there is a separate funding block recognising the costs associated with provision for high need pupils. This uses a formula to estimate how many children in each authority have very high costs, using measures of the proportions of children with parents on income support and of low birth weight, and distributes £6,801 per high cost pupil. This figure is based on historical evidence of what local educational authorities spend on average on such pupils.

The additional financial support provided to primary and secondary schools for children in general with special needs and in particular for those on the autistic spectrum is for local education authorities to decide: many have factors in their local formulae for such provision.