England: SPED program costs $16B a year; "financially unsustainable"

June 7, 2025, Observer: Surprise extra £4.5bn for schools as Reeves goes to wire on Cabinet cash

More money for SEND reforms and teachers’ pay while health and defence are big winners in spending review

Schools will receive an extra £4.5bn a year in this week’s spending review, taking the funding for each pupil in England to its highest-ever level.

In an interview with The Observer, Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, said children had been at the front of her mind as she balanced competing Whitehall demands. “I want young people to have the opportunity to fulfil their potential, wherever they are from, whatever their background,” she said. “That’s what really matters to me.”

The real-terms increase in core schools budget, which covers pupils aged 5 to 16, will help to fund teachers’ pay rises announced by the government last month.

Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, also persuaded the Treasury that money was needed to implement radical reforms to the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) provision, which will involve more pupils staying in mainstream schools.

The Department of Health and the Ministry of Defence will be the biggest winners in Wednesday’s spending review, with other public services squeezed. Angela Rayner, the housing secretary, and Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, are still defending their budgets as negotiations go to the wire. But the Department for Education is one of the unexpected beneficiaries as the Treasury allocates departmental budgets covering the next few years.

Day-to-day funding for schools will increase by more than £4.5bn a year by 2028-9 compared with the 2025-6 core schools budget, which was published at the spring statement. . . .

Labour was elected with a central promise to tackle the crisis in schools by recruiting 6,500 teachers. Since then, however, headteachers say they have been forced to make teachers and teaching assistants redundant to avoid going into deficit.

The trade unions have warned that if the government does not cover the cost of next year’s 4% pay rise for teachers with additional funding then more staff will lose their jobs. The schools budget this year is around £64 billion.

Meanwhile, the Department for Education is planning an overhaul of SEND provision that is likely to require extra training for teachers and some additional staff. Although children with the highest need will remain at special schools, the aim is to allow more such pupils to be taught in mainstream schools.

Specialist units will be set up and extra support offered to SEND pupils in classrooms. “We want to meet as many children’s needs as possible in mainstream education so they stay with their friends and grow and thrive with them,” one Whitehall source said. “We need to equip and support teachers and schools to build the confidence of parents.”

Experts warn that the current SEND system, which costs £12bn [$16B] a year in England, an increase of £4bn [$5.4B] since 2015, is financially unsustainable. Much of the cost comes from sending children to private specialist schools, which can charge annual fees of more than £100,000 [$136,000]. The cost of taxis to take children to specialist schools far from their homes has reached £1bn [$1.4B] a year.

There are 1.6m children with special needs in England. The number of children at specialist schools has grown to 157,000, up from 105,000 a decade ago.

The spending review will set out day-to-day expenditure for three years and investment spending for four years.