Funding for schools is a shared responsibility between central and local government. The majority of funding is provided by central government, with local authorities (LAs) providing the rest. In 2006-07, for the first time, schools received their funding from a Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) rather than as part of the local government settlement. The DSG is a ring-fenced grant and must be used for schools’ budgets. It is for each LA to distribute funding using a locally agreed formula, and for schools’ governing bodies to decide how to spend the available resources.
Support for children with special educational needs (SEN) accounts for a high proportion of all education expenditure. We do not hold information centrally about expenditure on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, but information collected from LAs shows planned expenditure on the education of children with SEN of £4.5 billion in 2006-07. This is about 13 per cent. of all education spending.
In addition, schools and LEAs can use their School Development Grant to support SEN. SDG is allocated to schools and LAs to spend on teaching and learning according to their own needs and priorities. Total SDG for 2006-07 is almost £2 billion and schools will see an increase over their 2005-06 SDG allocations of at least 3.4 per cent. per pupil in 2006-07 and 3.7 per cent. in 2007-08.