High needs funding
Place funding
Place funding is allocated to all types of special schools, apart from independent special schools, mainstream schools with an SEN unit or Resourced Provision and/or a sixth form that has pupils with high needs and all types of college that educate students who have high needs.
Place funding is allocated as an annual amount of core high needs funding. Once place funding is allocated, it is not associated with or reserved for a specific local authority or individual pupil or student. It is for the school or college to decide how best to apportion their total allocated place funding across the actual number of places commissioned by local authorities, considering the provision and support that may be specified in the individual pupils’ or students’ Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP).
Place funding is not withdrawn if an individual does not occupy a funded place. It provides all eligible schools and colleges with a guaranteed budget for the year and gives them a degree of financial stability.
A local authority may not seek to recover funding for places which it perceives as being unused from the previous or current academic year. Similarly, local authorities should not automatically be charged an extra £6,000 or £10,000 per head top-up funding for a pupil or student with high needs if a school or college has filled all funded places (irrespective of which local authority has filled them).
High needs top-up funding element 3
Top-up funding (element 3) is the funding which is required over and above the core funding (elements 1 and 2) a school or college receives to enable a pupil or student with high needs to participate in education and learning. This is paid by the commissioning local authority.
Which children and young people are funded
Although many pupils and students receiving high needs funding will have an associated EHCP, local authorities have the flexibility to provide high needs funding outside the statutory assessment process for all children and young people with high needs up to the age of 19.
