Sharon Hodgson – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sharon Hodgson on 2016-02-29.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she plans to monitor local authority spending in 2016-17 on specialist education services for children with special educational needs and disabilities.

Edward Timpson

Local authorities’ (LAs) spending on education and children’s social care is monitored on a twice yearly basis. LAs are required under Section 251 (S251) of the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009, to submit their planned (budget) and actual (outturn) expenditure to the Secretary of State, which includes spending in support of children with special educational needs and disabilities. The data collection began in early March 2016 for the 2016-17 budget statements, and the 2015-16 outturn statements are due to start being collected in early July 2016, with the 2016-17 outturn collection beginning in July 2017.

The department publishes the data from these S251 financial collections on the GOV.UK website, usually in the following September for budget and in the following December for outturn. The department also requires LAs to provide us with an annual assurance statement from the Chief Finance Officer that confirms the funding given for the purpose of education has been spent in line with the regulations.