(England) School leaders say $2.1B for SPED 'won't go very far at all'
- 1 day ago
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Flagship fund to improve inclusion in mainstream schools ‘won’t go very far at all’, and a clear national strategy is needed on how to use it, government is told.
School leaders have questioned how far a government fund for special educational needs and disabilities will stretch, as Tes analysis suggests it may not cover the cost of a single teaching assistant.
Under plans set out in the schools White Paper, the Inclusive Mainstream Fund will provide £1.6 billion [$2.1B] over three years to support pupils with SEND in mainstream settings.
The government says the fund, which starts next month, will “empower” schools to “deliver for children and young people with SEND”; for example, through small-group assistance in literacy and numeracy, and early interventions.
However, leaders warn the money “won’t go very far at all” and fear that it risks being “swallowed up” without a clear national strategy.
Will inclusion funding be enough?
The Inclusive Mainstream Fund is aimed at pupils in mainstream settings who do not have an education, health and care plan (EHCP).
Around 1.28 million pupils were receiving special educational needs support without an EHCP in 2024-25, nearly all in mainstream settings, according to the Department for Education.
If the £1.6 billion were targeted at this group, and distributed evenly, it would amount to around £1,246 [$1,671] per pupil over three years or approximately £415 [$557] per pupil per year.
Simon Tanner, director of school improvement at Authentic Education, warned that this £415 “won’t slice far”. His academy trust runs six primary schools, five secondaries and two special schools. . . .
He said that the government should provide targeted funding for specialist teaching assistants, which should feed into the additional cash announced by the government.. . . .
If, instead of ringfencing it for pupils with SEN, the £1.6 billion were distributed evenly across all 9.6 million pupils lacking an EHCP, it would amount to just £55 [$74] per pupil per year. . . .
This would pay for the employer costs of two hours of a teaching assistant’s time,
A DfE document published this week states that the Inclusive Mainstream Fund should not be used for “existing activities”, but rather for early intervention and providing a “more inclusive offer for pupils with SEND in mainstream settings”.
It adds that a “significant proportion” of mainstream inclusion funding will be spent on the workforce, including additional teaching assistants - and that this “may help offset the costs of any pay awards”.
“We encourage schools to consider all their funding in the round to respond to the challenge of promoting mainstream inclusion and to respond to wider cost pressures,” the DfE’s analysis adds.
Jarlath O’Brien, director of school improvement at Solent Academies Trust, which runs five special schools, warned that simply employing more teaching assistants risked the money being “swallowed up”.
There were around 290,000 full-time equivalent teaching assistants in English state schools in 2024-25 - 10 per cent more than in 2019-20.
Nearly all teaching assistants and learning support staff - around 97 per cent - work with pupils with SEND, recent government research shows.
“If the existing staff were more confident in meeting those needs, that, for me, would be a much better approach,” Mr O’Brien said, arguing that investment should focus on speech, language and literacy expertise across the teaching workforce.
He argued that without a coherent national strategy, funding could be “frittered away”.
Another example of how the funding could be used is contained in the White Paper, which names the Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI) as an intervention that “could be funded to strengthen language development and early communication skills”.
NELI has been a DfE-funded programme since 2020, and education secretary Bridget Phillipson has said the programme will be funded until 2029.
The cost of delivering NELI over three years equates to around £58 per child in a single-form-entry school and £43 per child in a two-form-entry school, according to the Education Endowment Foundation.
It is not clear whether the mainstream inclusion fund will be expected to cover the costs of NELI, and the DfE had not responded to Tes’ query about this at the time of writing.
The inclusion fund will go directly into school budgets, the DfE said, and after legislation, funding will be “rebalanced from the high-needs block” into schools’ budgets “over time”.
Schools will be expected to take on new responsibilities along with the funding, including publishing an inclusion strategy, developing digital individual support plans for all pupils with SEND, and participating in local school group funding pools.
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