Funding for pupils with SEN

Last reviewed on 27 January 2022
School types: All · School phases: All
Ref: 4735

Get to grips with how provision for pupils with special educational needs (SEN) is funded in your school.

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Contents

  1. Mainstream schools: you'll receive funding in 2 main ways
  2. Special schools and alternative provision (AP): how you'll receive funding
  3. Pupils with EHC plans: personal budgets

Mainstream schools: you'll receive funding in 2 main ways

1. Your budget or core funding

As a mainstream maintained school, academy or free school, your school receives resources to support its pupils with special educational needs (SEN) through its main budget, or core funding - this is known as your 'notional SEN budget'. 

Your school’s budget is calculated through the national funding formula (NFF). But until the 'hard NFF' is introduced, your local authority (LA) will use its own local funding formula to determine the actual allocation for its schools. It'll use factors such as ‘deprivation’ and ‘low prior attainment’ to account for pupils with high needs in your school. 

Using the budget, your school is expected to:

Where the cost of a pupil’s additional support is higher than £6,000, the excess will be met with

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