Education Health and Care Plans (EHCP)

How is support for pupils with SEN funded?

Pupils with SEN are funded through three funded elements.

1. The first £4000 of support comes from the money the school gets per child who attends.
2. The second portion of SEN spending, around £6,000 per child comes from a pot each school receives which is ringfenced for meeting SEN needs.
3. Top-up funding is the additional amount delivered via the EHCP. Top-up funding is the amount made available to a mainstream school to deliver the provision in an EHCP, over and above that which the school are expected fund themselves from their general funding

What is SEND banding?

Banding is a way for local authorities to allocate levels of top-up funding for securing special educational provision for children and young people with EHC plans. These are not statutory arrangements and each LA has it’s own mechanism for allocating funding.

SEND Banding and special educational provision

Under s.42 Children and Families Act 2014, the local authority must secure all the special educational provision in the EHC plan. Banding is allocated once the special educational provision has been determined and once the EHC plan is in place.

SEND Banding in North East Lincolnshire

NE Lincs SEND panel follow this process:

1. Produce EHCP listing the provision the pupil needs
2. Compare provision in the EHCP against the descriptions in the NE Lincs SEN Banding.
   • Social, Emotional, and Mental Health (Word, 91 KB)
   • Autism Spectrum Disorder (Word, 64 KB)
   • General Learning Difficulties (Word, 86 KB)
   • Severe Learning Difficulties (Word, 17 KB)
   • Specific Language Disorder (Word, KB)
   • Hearing Impairment (Word, 47 KB)
   • Visual Impairment (Word, 50 KB)
   • Physical Difficulties (Word, KB)
3. Assess how much additional ‘top-up’ funding is needed to deliver the provision

NB: It should be noted that the 2022 SEND Green paper proposes, ‘A new national framework for councils for banding and tariffs of High Needs, to match the national standards and offer clarity on the level of support expected, and put the system on a financially sustainable footing in the future’.

Banding values 2023